BP Bans Workers From Sharing Photos of Animals Killed By the Oil Spill

BP Bans Workers From Sharing Photos of Animals Killed by the Oil Spill : TreeHugger

 

BP would prefer you to see photos like this: One of the lucky pelicans, rescued from the oil spill and released in St Petersburg, Florida. Photo: US Coast Guard.
This stage management/damage control is just really starting to piss me off... According to reports in Mother Jones and the Daily News BP has apparently banned oil spill clean up contractors from sharing photos of dead animals washed ashore. This tight-fisted control seems to be wearing on some contractors. One took a Daily News reporter out to see, in his words, what BP didn't want President Obama to see.

"There is a lot of cover up for BP. They specifically informed us that they don't want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence. It's important to me that people know the truth about what's going on here. The things I've seen: They just aren't right. All the life out here is full of oil.

Demonstrating that: A dead dolphin rotting on shore, filled with oil when they found it; pelicans, heads covered in oil, trying to clean themselves, repeatedly, and failing; turtles dead and those not yet passed, soon to be.
Kate Sheppard over at Mother Jones has the animal body count estimate so far: 444 dead birds, 222 dead sea turtles, 24 mammals (including dolphins). I say estimated, because as Sheppard notes, as with the Exxon Valdez, many carcasses have likely sunk and will never be found.
Read more: NY Daily News

BP Media Clampdown: No Photos Of Dead Animals, Please

When we last left Mother Jones' reporter Mac McClelland,

 she was in the Gulf Coast region, caught up in the surreal tangle of media roadblocks that were being erected by British Petroleum to keep reporters at bay. How have things done since then? Not well, as it turns out!

Indeed, when I ran into some [cleanup workers] packing up on the Grand Isle beach twenty minutes later, I asked them only if they were done working for the day, and they refused to tell me. One woman said, "I can't talk to you," and then another worker ran up to her and grabbed her arm and said, "Just ignore her, ignore her," and the whole interaction was unsettlingly rude and sort of sad. The workers who were staying next to me in my Grand Isle motel last week told me that when BP (not, in this case, and for the record, a subcontractor) had instructed them that they couldn't talk to the press, it'd involved a warning that media organizations would go so far as to dub audio propaganda over their videotaped commentary, putting unflattering words in their mouths.

The New York Daily News' Matthew Lysiak is also in Grand Isle, where he was the fortunate beneficiary of a "surreptitious tour of the wildlife disaster unfolding in Louisiana."

"There is a lot of coverup for BP. They specifically informed us that they don't want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence. It's important to me that people know the truth about what's going on here," the contractor said. "The things I've seen: They just aren't right. All the life out here is just full of oil. I'm going to show you what BP never showed the President."

A dead dolphin, stuffed with oil, figures prominently in the account. It's all very sad, and not a little bit enraging. As Allison KilKenny puts it: "In a sane world, a company guilty of gross negligence that resulted in the deaths of 11 workers would be under criminal investigation, and not be parading around the coast, telling the media where they can go and who they can talk to, while forbidding their clean-up crews from wearing protective gear."
Meanwhile, remember BP CEO Tony Hayward, who this past Sunday said that we "wanted his life back?" Well, he's very sorry about how that must have sounded, to humans:

"I made a hurtful and thoughtless comment on Sunday when I said that "I wanted my life back." When I read that recently, I was appalled. I apologize, especially to the families of the 11 men who lost their lives in this tragic accident. Those words don't represent how I feel about this tragedy, and certainly don't represent the hearts of the people of BP - many of whom live and work in the Gulf - who are doing everything they can to make things right. My first priority is doing all we can to restore the lives of the people of the Gulf region and their families - to restore their lives, not mine."

Naturally, that bit of flackery was emailed to reporters and posted on the BP America Facebook page, in keeping with BP's tradition of keeping anything too troubling as far away from cameras as possible.
RELATED:
"Ignore Her": The BP Press Lockdown Continues [Mother Jones]
Dying, dead marine wildlife paint dark, morbid picture of Gulf Coast following oil spill [New York Daily News]
BP tells cleanup workers no photos of dead, oil-covered marine life [Allison Kilkenny: Unreported]

BP Better At Stemming Journalists Than Oil Wells

 

BP Oilpocalypse Creates Underwater Nightmare - WHAT BP DOES NOT WANT YOU TO SEE

Philippe Cousteau, Jr., the grandson of the famous ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, to film what the spill looks like underwater. Cousteau observed, "This is a nightmare," and "one of the most horrible things I've seen under water."

Media claim access to spill site has been limited ~ Censorship In America

By MATTHEW BROWN (AP) – 

Media organizations say they are being allowed only limited access to areas impacted by the Gulf oil spill through restrictions on plane and boat traffic that are making it difficult to document the worst spill in U.S. history.

In at least two cases, a media organization and a seaplane pilot say BP PLC — the company responsible for cleaning up the spill — appeared to have a role in deciding on access.

Other media, including The Associated Press, have reported coverage problems because their access has been restricted, though not all have linked the decision to BP. Government officials say restrictions are needed to protect wildlife and ensure safe air traffic.

Ted Jackson, a photographer for The Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans, said Saturday that access to the spill "is slowly being strangled off."

A CBS news story said one of its reporting teams was threatened with arrest by the Coast Guard and turned back from an oiled beach at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The story said the reporters were told the denial was under "BP's rules."

U.S. Coast Guard and Federal Aviation Administration officials said BP PLC was not controlling access.

Coast Guard officials also said there was no intent to conceal the scope of the disaster. Rather, they said, the spill's complexity had made it difficult to allow the open access sought by the media.

Associated Press Senior Managing Editor Mike Oreskes said the news organization was concerned about the restrictions.

"The Coast Guard obviously has a responsibility to protect natural habitats from both the seeping oil and from excessive traffic," Oreskes said in a statement. "But we have a shared responsibility to keep the public informed about this extraordinary event. It is not the job of either the government or BP to keep journalists from seeing what has happened."

Coast Guard Lt. Commander Rob Wyman said personnel involved in the CBS dispute said no one was threatened with arrest.

Vessels responding to the spill are surrounded by a 500 yard "standoff area" with restricted access, he said.

"If we see anybody impeding operations, we're going to ask you to move. We're going to ask you to back up and move away," he said.

BP contractors are operating alongside the FAA and Coast Guard at a command center that approves or denies flight requests. Charter pilots say they have been denied permission to fly below 3,000 feet when they have reporters or photographers aboard.

Those special flight restrictions, imposed on May 12, cover thousands of square miles of the Gulf and a broad swath of Louisiana's coast. Normally there are no restrictions on flying.

Charter seaplane pilot Lyle Panepinto of Belle Chasse, La., said his request to enter restricted airspace was denied after he told a BP contractor that his passenger was Jackson, the Times-Picayune photographer

The contractor, Dennis Dorsey, worked in a command center staffed by the company, the Coast Guard and the FAA. Reached by telephone Dorsey, who works for O'Brien's Response Management, said Panepinto's flight was rejected because it was not part of the response to the spill. He said that was based on rules set by the FAA.

"We don't want people (in the restricted flight area) that aren't working through this group trying to take care of the environmental problem," he said. "That's all set by the FAA."

Government officials and BP contractors take turns answering calls from pilots with requests for exemptions from the flight restrictions, Dorsey said.

The chief of the Coast Guard's public affairs programs branch said access had been hampered by a cumbersome approval process that stretched all the way to the White House.

Chief Warrant Officer Adam Wine said White House officials had to sign off on requests for tours of the spill zone before they could proceed. The Coast Guard is attempting to increase access through guided boat and aircraft tours, he said. Still, there is no plan to lift restrictions on flights or boat traffic into offshore areas — including some barrier islands.

White House officials referred questions about their involvement to Wyman. He said Wine's description of the chain of command was incorrect and that all requests from media were decided on by the command center in Robert, La. The Department of Homeland Security is notified, he said.

Two weeks ago, oceanographer Jean-Michel Cousteau was turned away from waters near a wildlife sanctuary after the Coast Guard discovered a reporter and a photographer from The Associated Press were on board.

Jackson, The Times-Picayune photographer, said he had been kept back from oil-covered beaches and denied a request to fly below 3,000 feet.

Referring to the elevations pilot are mandated to maintain, Jackson added: "The oil spill from there is just a rumor."

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said hundreds of flights related to the recovery effort go each day into the restricted airspace, including aircraft from the oil industry and law enforcement that are exempt from the flight restrictions.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.