BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil 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.

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

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.

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.