Who controls the message in Gulf spill?

A media columnist asks the question as unprecedented real-time coverage unfolds

By Jeff Lewis

June 15, 2010

Leave it to a columnist who writes primarily about media to ask what nobody else will. NY Times writer David Carr argued this week that the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is unique less because of the size of the spill itself, so much as how news of the event has been transmitted.

This is the first spill that has been covered in real time, with streaming high-definition video on desktops and televisions everywhere, network anchors racking up miles flying back and forth, and throbbing info-graphics that track the mess.

The barrage of information has been a headache for U.S. President Barack Obama and BP alike, both of whom are eager to offer assurances that all is well in Louisiana. Carr writes that since the Deepwater Horizon rig went down on April 20, a “hybrid informational apparatus” has developed, where mixed messages about the exact size and impact of the spill prevail.

Meanwhile, efforts to staunch the flow of oil from the ocean floor have met with limited success. And the value of BP stock has been clobbered by anxious investors. Those two factors provoked an unusual (and perhaps unprecedented) response from BP, Carr says. At the same time that the company’s “top-kill” approach to stem the spill appeared to have failed, information about the effort was suddenly deemed stock-market sensitive. That meant updates about the spill were governed by disclosure rules of the NY and London stock exchanges.

The development, as well as reports that oil-soaked birds were being hidden from view under the watch of National Guard troops, prompted Carr to wonder: “Should the volatility of a company’s stock price determine how public information on an environmental disaster be delivered to the public?”