BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill | Hacker News Reader

BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill

newsweek.com

110 pointsmmphosis72 comments

Sounds like a great opportunity for real reporters to dress up as fishermen to sneak out there and take some unique pictures. This kind of thing only stops the half-ass-reporters out there who will go home after running into the coast guard to complain and feel sorry about themselves.

boo hoo BP is trying to control the press coverage

Uh, yes, that's what a public company has to do: maximize shareholder value. Now do what real journalists are supposed to do do: break a couple of stupid rules, find a way to get out there, and take some damned pictures. What are they going to do? Shoot down your plane? Seriously.

I mean, what kind of journalist decides because the coastguard stopped you, you're going to sit back and write self-pitying articles like this? Grow some balls, just hide in a fishing boat for all I care, and take some damned pictures.

Then write another story of how badass you were nearly getting shot down by the BP Air Force. Reporters nowadays, sheesh.

In all understanding of the laws of the United States...

Uh, yes, that's what a public company has to do: maximize shareholder value. Now do what real journalists are supposed to do do: break a couple of stupid rules, find a way to get out there, and take some damned pictures. What are they going to do? Shoot down your plane? Seriously.

From the article:

The problem, as many members of the press see it, is that even when access is granted, it’s done so under the strict oversight of BP and Coast Guard personnel. Reporters and photographers are escorted by BP officials on BP-contracted boats and aircraft. So the company is able to determine what reporters see and when they see it.

From the article:

Local fishermen and charter boat captains are also being pressured by BP not to work with the press. Left without a source of income, most have decided to work with BP to help spread booms and ferry officials around. Their passengers used to include members of the press, but not anymore.

How can you take those pictures?

EDIT: I apologize for not being able to properly use the <i> tags, I am in all honesty going through the arc3 code right now and this issue will soon be addressed.

EDIT^2: Many kind thanks to anigbrowl for suggesting the correct formatting!

How can you take those pictures?

Use your imagination ;)

Edit (for you down-voters): Fine, here's some off the top of my head:

  * Rent your own plane and fly over without permission,
  * register a fishing company and get a job working for BP,
  * find a way to take pictures while avoiding detection, or just
  * bribe the fishermen.

These are off the top of my head, I imagine someone whose full time job depends on thinking of them will have many more and better ones.

Edit-reply: you're right about my first example, if violating the FAA regulations is as risky as it sounds. But my larger point, that entrepreneurial journalists should be able to find a low-risk way, stands.

I'm sure you recognize the scale of numbers, but as currently suggested the current surface area for the spill is:

157,168 square km

So if you think there's a way to rent a plane to avoid FAA regulations over this enormous area, or bribe fisherman to do this and potentially risk their lives, go ahead.

Who's funding these entrepreneurial journalists?

"The truth" is worth a lot of gratitude and 0 actual dollars.

Journalism is all about advertising, i.e., page views and publications sold.

This is one of the hottest topics in the U.S. right now.

Nobody likes dry analysis; everyone is eager for a quick, vivid, and emotionally compelling way to engage with the story.

Therefore, if you publish more and better pictures than the competition, you'll attract more (non-)readers and make more money.

Still doesn't add up. You're talking about a huge expenditure and significant personal risk in order to hopefully be a viral hit and not just be scooped and republished. Even then, you have to get lucky and pick up an iconic photo, it's not like you're going to find a bunch of great prose in the ocean besides synonyms for "lots of gallons".

Why pursue this story instead of one that's much cheaper and will get you only a fewer impressions on average?

If the photographers are already in the region racking up travel expenses and trying to charter private planes, expense isn't the problem.

You're right in your final concession, but this is where the weakening of mainstream media is most obvious. My guess is there are fewer reporters per publication on the ground with smaller expense accounts and fewer overall resources than what was available to their brethren covering Valdez in 1989.

As a result they have to write whiny stories about how they can't get access when the story they wanted to have falls through. Newsweek should have left those pages blank with the words "oil spill photo spread here" instead.

What you propose risks criminal and civil liability from multiple directions. Few, if any, photojournalists can afford to take such risks. Most news organizations won't. Yes, disasters and war are where much great photojournalism takes place. But it's ironically easier to do that abroad with the specter of the mighty US State Department at your shoulder than it is in your own backyard, where you're just a meddling shutterbug on the make and in the way - and will be described as such by an ambitious prosecutor.

Sure,it's worth a try and might make for some great photos. But being accused of endangering safety or hampering the mission or both by the Feds is not fun, and rather than threatening you with a possible first-amendment case, it's a lot easier for them to go after your pilot and pressure them into signing a statement saying you suborned them into an illegal act.

For these reasons, it's much likelier that news orgs will seek an injunction or declaratory judgment permitting them to gather pictures and video, rather than proceed by stealth.

This is pure FUD. What criminal and civil statutes would be violated by taking a picture of a public place? Something a low-level drone working for the government says does not a law make.

Tell you what - hack into the SEC and DOJ servers and give me the skinny on that Goldman Sachs case. Yeah I know access is restricted, but its our tax dollars, right? I mean, what could go wrong?

Basically, if you persuade the pilot of a plane or boat to flout FAA or Coast Guard regulations by bribery or deception, you could be charged with reckless endangerment or be accused of having committed various torts. I do not agree with this media blackout at all, but as a practical matter most journalists and pilots would rather not run afoul of some overstressed official with arrest powers.

Also add:

* Balloons! http://bit.ly/99sLWo

asterisks at the beginning and end of your emphasis worthy text will make it italic. No spaces next to the asterisks or * this happens.

I'm not sure that obstructing the legitimate first amendment rights of the press (which courts have tended to interpret broadly) in pursuit of short-term advantage necessarily maximizes shareholder value. Fighting a lawsuit against multiple news organizations or a class of professional freelance photojournalists could get quite expensive.

Does the first amendment apply to corporations? No doubt it would apply to government organizations, but I can't see that nattering to BP's shareholders.

The flight ban is also being enforced by the FAA. Probably difficult to find a pilot willing to put their career at risk. I'm not clear why my tax dollars via the FAA should be used to fund the PR response of a public company.

I can see them putting some restrictions on the area due the the massive amount of press that will want access to the airspace (i.e. to prevent aerial traffic jams over the hardest hit areas or the areas with the most damning photos). But the idea that BP is pulling the strings and that only BP-charter flights can get clearance is getting too close to the realm of Big Brother (well, closer to the Neal Stephenson vision of the future in Snow Crash where corporations rule everything) for me.

Funny, there's dozens of aircraft aloft over my city of Los Angeles at any given moment, and it's far smaller than this spill.

Crowded airspace is not the issue.

Career? You do know that if you have a pilot's license you can just go rent a Cessna for $100 an hour, right? (And a pilot's license is not that hard to get. It's like a driver's license; except that when I got a driver's license, I had to have 100 hours of driving logged before I could take the test. For a pilot's license, it's like 40 hours.)

There's no ramifications for violating FAA restricted airspace?

The flight ban is a minor issue. The reasons for the flight ban are not.

The problem is that the oil spill releases vapor. Said vapor has two nasty tendencies. The first is that it makes people woozy so that they make bad decisions. The second is that it can explode when exposed to fire, such as may be found in airplane engines.

Unless you understand how to avoid the risks, flying low over an oil spill is a really good way to get yourself killed.

(Incidentally the observant may wonder why the workers aren't being provided with masks. They weren't until people complained. Now they have the masks. But unofficial reports say that BP is threatening to fire people who use the masks. This fact alone shows sufficient hypocrisy that I'm expecting BP to dodge all responsibility as fast as possible. Just like Exxon did when they got over 3000 lawsuits over people sickened by fumes from the Valdez spill thrown out because "they just had flus and colds". Yet another reason for them to not want photographic documentation of the cleanup efforts.)

Update: See http://www.adn.com/evos/stories/T99032316.html for background on how Exxon dodged health claims, and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/26/gulf-oil-spill-clea... for confirmation that there are health problems with the cleanup this time.

The truly messed up thing about this - that we should be very angry about - is the U.S. Government is helping out in the cover up. Yes, companies are supposed to spin and do damage control. I guess getting the coast guard to give you hand is probably a pretty effective way to do that.

Also, it should be noted that print media has been in a downward spiral for the last four years and no longer has the reporters, photographers or resources they did five years ago, let alone 21 years ago.

New media to the rescue? Where's the bloggers an community journalists covering this?

But why? Why is the coast guard helping? The article didn't even conjecture a reason, they just stated it baldly.

I'd guess BP is paying someone off.

SomeONE? Maybe you didn't notice but the coast guard is not one person.

I find it hard to believe they could pay off enough, or high enough, level people for that to be possible.

Might've been an instance of a not-paid-off coast guard douche getting all authoritative on some reporters. Reporters then write story blaming the coast guard.

Or who knows. It's probably not a conspiracy though.

>SomeONE? Maybe you didn't notice but the coast guard is not one person.

One characteristic of hierarchy is that influencing one person ends up influencing many.

>I find it hard to believe they could pay off enough, or high enough, level people for that to be possible.

BP is a very connected company. I doubt very much that influencing high-ups is only possible in non-US countries.

They ever-so-slightly hinted that it may be because of the massive demand for media coverage the coast guard has received. I don't really know though - I've seen some pretty damaging pictures, but I suppose not as bad as the pictures could be.

Less press coverage is good for the government as well, as the focus will only turn to "why haven't you been able to stop this yet?"

Unfortunately, lone bloggers and community journalists don't have the resources to fight a legal battle if caught. Back in the golden age of print media, you at least had the possibility of support from the publication you worked for or its parent company.

Wait-a-sec, what about the kids over at Crisis Commons (http://oreil.ly/dm1OW0) and Grassroots Mapping(http://bit.ly/99sLWo) considered community journalists, and doing their best to work around the resources issue?

That's great stuff! I guess I didn't mean no one's actually doing it, but that there used to be a whole industry interested in and capable of doing amazing investigative journalism with backers willing to stand up for them. If these guys run afoul of the law, how long will they last?

Here's the actual TFR:

http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_0_2957.html

"Pilots requesting flights under this exception must contact the houma deepwater horizon incident air operations center at 985-493-7804 between the hours of 0600-1800 cst, a minimum of 24 hours prior to desired flight time. Operators should be prepared to provide precise details of their requested flight including: pilots name and contact information, company/organization, purpose of flight, type aircraft, callsign, ingress/egress points and times, Requested altitude and route of flight. Pilots will then be provided with additional instructions for obtaining final approval and beacon code assignment."

The comments here scare me. Why is everyone afraid of the government or breaking some rules? The worst that could happen to you is a few days in prison. Suck it up, serve the sentence, and know that you've changed the world in a positive way. I'm glad that everyone is not so spineless, otherwise we wouldn't even know there was an oil spill...

The worst that could happen to you is a few days in prison

I don't know about journalists, but having a criminal file would make many jobs I am interested in inaccessible.

Not as many as being afraid would.

BP's also denying the existence of large underwater oil plumes that have been spotted by many science vessels:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/06/bp-denies-existence-...

Finding a pilot willing to loose his $6k+ pilots license to the FAA, no matter how farked the FAA is would be tough.

Easier to get a $300 RC plane setup, lightweight camera and a boat. The Slowstick by GWS makes an easy to fly, inexpensive camera platform.

If I was anywhere near the gulf, I'd be doing this myself.

Best idea I've heard yet. I, for one, welcome our new sticking-it-to-the-man robot overlords.

Kickstarter - Grassroots mapping the Gulf oil spill with balloons and kites: http://kck.st/cj3Anh

If you're going to do it, DO IT! Stop raising money for everything: it's a waste of time.

They are doing it: http://grassrootsmapping.org/gulf-oil-spill/

So they are... clearly I didn't get past the fold on Kickstarter. Maybe this is why?

  $750 PLEDGED OF $5,000 GOAL
  19 DAYS TO GO
  THIS PROJECT WILL ONLY BE FUNDED IF AT LEAST $5,000
    IS PLEDGED BY MONDAY JUN 21, 6:18PM EDT

Why use kickstarter instead of PayPal/traditional payment gateway? The theme of the site suggests that a project will not begin until it has achieved a funding goal. Will grassrootsmapping see any of the $750 they have raised so far before the 21st? And do they get anything if they don't reach $5k?

Thanks, I just contributed.

Of course, the blockade is actually being run by government and military entities. BP can't arrest journalists, but the Coast Guard can.

They can threaten journalists with arrest pretty easily. Tresspassing. They've got lawyers and you don't.

In case there was any doubt about the feasibility of coordinating a large-scale conspiracy involving large numbers of personel, here it is. In plain view yet we may never see it.

Here's the most graphic images I've seen, but they're over a week old and pretty tame compared to Valdez.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisia...

I hope you mean the images are pretty tame in comparison, and not the spill itself. Not only has the BP leak massively surpassed Valdez in volume (2-10x), it took place a mile underwater, which multiplies it's danger.

Exxon Valdez was a surface spill, so most of the oil that was spilled stayed on the surface of the water and began to have dramatic effects on the coastal environment. This disaster is leaking millions of gallons per day (Valdez was 10 million gallons) from the sea floor, much of which is rising slowly to the top through a mile of water, dispersing on its way up, and some percentage of the oil is clumping at the bottom, or simply not rising [1]. The polluted area should thus be measured in cubic feet, and not simply in visibly affected surface area.

The implications of this event are quite staggering, and BP will get away with paying a slim fraction of the true cost to society.

[1] unless I am misinformed and 100% of crude oil rises to the surface

Ah, but the more dilute the spill the better things are.

Bacteria do a wonderful job to biodegrading oil - but only if they have enough oxygen, which is in limited supply. By spreading things out they have enough oxygen to work with.

And yes, 100% of the oil should rise to the surface, but some will rise slowly.

I think the reason we are not seeing a lot of oil is simply that the bacteria ate it.

what do bacteria turn oil into? CO2? In that case will there be big algae blooms in the next phase of this spill?

CO2, yes (and water), but algae blooms are not caused by CO2, they are caused by nitrogen or phosphorous.

Note that not all of the oil that gets to the top, stays there.

They have been pouring dispersants on the oil. That makes the oil bind to water and go back into the water column. The oil industry likes it because it hides the oil. Fish in the water column don't like it so much.

The fisheries hit by the Valdez spill have still not recovered.

Yes, of course that's what I meant. The images from the Valdez spill truly document the tragedy. I don't feel like the same thing is happening with the gulf spill.

On a related note, I was just remarking to a friend today about how hard this oil spill is to think about without seeing any sort of visual diagrams of the well, what the seafloor looks like, where the relief wells would be drilled, etc. These sort of visual aids have been conspicuously absent in mostly everything I've seen about this catastrophe.

The BBC has a fairly good diagram of what's going on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8651333.stm

A visualization of how big the spill is relative to others: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10198201.stm

Believe it or not, the BBC has some of the best graphical representations of what has been happening over the past 40 days.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8651333.stm

As a past resident of Louisiana (attended LSU and lived in New Orleans for 3 years) I can tell you that this catastrophe will economically be on-par with Hurricane Katrina. Many of us have no idea how important (and awesome!) our seafood industry is. Our best shrimp, crabs, and oysters all directly come from the area that this spill is impacting. All I can say is, this sucks.

With that said, reading the article leads me to believe that a good majority of reporters and people being turned away have been done so in good faith or simple mistakes. Let's not be mistaken - reporters can crowd an area and cause serious safety concerns for people who are working to contain the spill. And they can also irritate the crap out of workers who are more concerned with getting stuff done than answering lots of questions. Reporters will climb over themselves to get the latest scoop on a hop topic. And this is one.

On on the subject of TFR's (Temporary Flight Restrictions) as mentioned in the article - Only the FAA issues TFR's, and those are issued to protect operating aircraft in a specially designated zone from outside interference (read: mostly the media). There was a complete TFR issued for most of south east Louisiana just after Katrina so that air traffic was carefully controlled for rescue operations. This is no different, there is an enormous amount of aircraft that are working in this area and TFR's are common to protect the working aircraft from non-essential related aircraft.

I'm sure that BP has their corporate spin-doctors running at full steam, but I'm quite positive that there is no conspiracy to shut down access to the public regarding this tragedy.

There are many excellent diagrams here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/25/us/20100525-to...

The congressional testimony has good diagrams, and The Oil Drum has reproduced a lot of them, amidst good discussion. (Of course, other missing information has contributed to the multitude of plausible-sounding theories about what is actually going on.) http://www.theoildrum.com/

I found this very useful for portraying the actual size of the spill: http://www.beowulfe.com/oil/

Good post - check this out for aerials of the disaster on the coast: http://healthygulf.org/201005281321/blog/bp-s-oil-drilling-d...

Cops are being complicit because they know long after the press is gone, BP will still be there handing out the cash to those that helped them cover this up.

Remember BP has other rigs running in the area which made them $3 Billion this year alone. They probably won't even bother renaming themselves and just spend the money on lawyers and their PR machine instead.

As a corporation they've also been handed unlimited votes via unlimited advertising, hence politicians working with them.

How can BP block anything? They are a private corporation with no particular rights to the public beaches they are making a fuss over. This is so wrong...

They donate to politicians, who have passed laws allowing them to do whatever they feel like doing. Balance of power? Hahahaha.

It's pretty sad how strongly the desire to share information inversely correlates with naked financial interest.

First off BP has an overriding obligation to its stockholders. Second, BP has a PR playbook for this scenario that is based upon decades of experience. For the moment BP's money is making the rules.

How many of those stockholders are going to affected by the local impact to Louisiana and the possible National/Global economic impact as it radiates outward? It's short-sighted to talk about BP's obligations to their stockholders just in terms of raw stock prices.

[ You also fail to mention that many BP employees as well as executives and board members probably have stock options, meaning that they are also looking after their own interests in this matter too. It's not like they want to be altruistic, but these pesky investors are holding them back. And it's not like these 'stockholders' are some external entity to the company with a hard line between investors and employees with no grey area in between. ]

{edit} AIG also had an obligation to their investors to keep the stock price up and up and up... until it came crashing down. Saying, 'they have an obligation to their investors,' is really just a cop out. It's a way of pushing responsibility away (i.e. "Don't blame me! I have a responsibility to the investors, my hands are tied! I'm compelled to this course of action.").

Blowout: The Deepwater Horizon Disaster (cbsnews.com) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1393992

Maybe someone should build a site to anonymously post photos on.

pretty sure wikileaks will help you there - http://www.wikileaks.com

Or 4chan (or any of the other anonymous image boards)...

Or a throw-away Flickr account...

The hardest part is the getting of the photos, not the distribution.

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