A Disaster, Privately Managed By DAVID CARR

June 13, 2010
A Disaster, Privately Managed By DAVID CARR
The three journalists crept along in a boat captained by James Ledet in a bayou near Golden Meadow, La., one early afternoon. We were all looking for the same thing as we traversed narrow stretches of water framed by swamp grass, in a landscape dotted with docked shrimp boats and old oil rigs.

And before too long, we all saw what we were looking for, almost motionless just below the surface.

A big ol’ redfish.

Of course, these days, the only thing reporters go looking for in the bayous is oil, and its collateral effects, but this was back on April 16, four days before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded 40 miles offshore. My buddies, both reporters at The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, and I were in the midst of what has become a semiannual outing to catch redfish, but we go mostly to spend time in the swamp, with its mysterious watery tentacles and to watch the sun drop as we sit on the deck of a big cabin on stilts.

But that’s past. Cajun Resorts, the spot we stayed at, is buttoned up behind a widespread ban on fishing. Our captain, a former rig rat, has switched back to his old business and is now working with BP to limit the damage. When I called Poppy Duet, our Cajun hostess who helped cook up some of those redfish we caught, she sounded quietly beside herself.

“We’ve been closed for four weeks,” she said. “The oil’s over in the next bay, not here, but we’re all shut down. We’re waiting and working on making a claim, but we don’t really know what’s going to happen next. We’re watching the news, but it’s really hard to tell what’s going on.”

She’s not alone. Because the disaster was slow-moving, the full might of American journalism has been brought to bear. In one sense, the public has never been more informed. 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. We can all see the video for ourselves: an angry plume that looks like hell has been breached and is sending a dark, massive emissary to the surface.

But to look for clarity amid the murk is a daily riddle. The size of the spill has been a moving target, with estimates recently doubled to 25,000 or 30,000 barrels a day, even after BP stanched some of the flow.

So what amount of oil was coming out of that hole in the first place? We will never know, in part because our government has never gained custody of information. What is clear is that even weeks into the disaster, public information has been privatized in whole or in part. Every disaster has chaotic elements and a need to maintain order and safety, but the economic interests of a large commercial enterprise are clearly impeding the free flow of information.

Journalists in the gulf are now dealing with a hybrid informational apparatus that does not reflect government’s legally mandated bias toward openness and transparency.

The Coast Guard may answer the phone when reporters call the Joint Information Center set up to provide answers, but more often than not, the phone is quickly handed off to BP officials. As my colleague Jeremy Peters wrote last week, flights carrying members of the media seeking photographs of the disaster have been restricted, and news organizations including CBS, The Associated Press and The Times-Picayune have complained that their efforts to report have been hampered by limited access. And BP has refused to acknowledge giant plumes of oil under the surface that were observed by local residents and reporters alike.

On Thursday night, Anderson Cooper of CNN complained about seemingly ridiculous efforts to control the story, including the fact that rescued oil-covered birds were being guarded and hidden from view by members of the National Guard. Tom Foreman, a CNN correspondent, tried to interview BP workers, but they would only say, over and over, as if working from a script, “I am only here to support the cleanup mission.” Mr. Foreman pressed and a guard intervened, saying, “You can’t do that! Sir! Stop! I can’t allow you to do that!”

An employee of the St. Bernard Parish government, who asked not to be identified because he was not officially authorized to speak on the matter, said that issues of access were primarily in the hands of BP.

“BP is running everything down here,” he said. “It’s their show.”

What had been a kind of détente between reporters and BP broke down at the end of May, when the efforts at a top kill were clearly failing but the company refused to acknowledge it. Reporters complained and asked for more accurate, timely information, and a BP official responded with a memorandum saying that the company was prevented from answering individual questions by disclosure rules governing trade in its stock.

“Given recent volatility in BP share price, I’m told that information related to top kill is now considered stock-market sensitive, which means it has to be managed under disclosure rules for the London and N.Y. stock exchanges,” the BP media official said in an e-mail message. “In a nutshell, that means all investors must be provided information on an equal basis. That precludes me from sending you updates as various aspects of the operation unfold.”

Really? Should the volatility of a company’s stock price determine how public information on an environmental disaster be delivered to the public?

The lack of transparency has turned James Carville, a Louisiana native and a frequent contributor to CNN, into something very similar to John Goodman’s character on HBO’s series “Treme,” a Jeremiah who is shouting into a wind of indifference.

Reached by phone on Friday in New Orleans, Mr. Carville said secrecy had a place in national affairs, just not this one.

“I believe this country is at war,” he said. “We are being invaded, but in this instance it’s not Al Qaeda or the Japanese, it’s just a hideous, greasy, stupid slick of oil that can’t adjust to our tactics, so why the secrets? It’s absurd that we have any secrecy around this, and absurd that the government is going along with it. There should be no limits on access, not for the scientists, not for the journalists, and not for the public that has every right to know what is going on down here and how much of the culture is being lost.”