Spill Here, Spill Now, Shhhhhhhh 0

On the Media looks at coverage of the wild well and claims that BP was trying to throttle reporting. From the website:

A handful of media outlets have reported that their reporters were denied access while trying to cover the oil spill in the Gulf, leaving some journalists worried that BP is deciding where they can and can’t go. Times-Picayune photojournalist Ted Jackson recounts his access problems while Lieutenant Commander Chris O’Neil of the US Coast Guard explains that BP is definitely not calling the shots.

A nugget from the transcript:

BOB GARFIELD (from On the Media–ed.): Just the suggestion that BP is making decisions about the movements of journalists caused an outcry, and by midweek the Coast Guard had stepped in to clarify its media policy and to reiterate that BP is definitely not making the rules.

But by that point, a few journalists had already been running in circles, including Times-Picayune photojournalist Ted Jackson, trying to do a routine flyover. Jackson had hired a seaplane to get aerial shots of the spill.

TED JACKSON (news photographer–ed.): Typically, you call the FAA and request permission to get below the temporary flight restriction, and the flight restriction that day was 3,000 feet, which is way too high to make a picture. So we requested to be able to fly lower than that, and the authority asked who was on the flight. And he said, I have the Times-Picayune photographer. And the answer was immediately, no then, you cannot have this exemption.

The seaplane company owner asked him, can I get your name so I can put your name in the file of people who were denying this request? He told him his name, and he said that he was a BP contractor hired to handle aviation requests. And that was just very disturbing to think that I was being denied access from a BP representative.

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