Crisis Management

Are Oil Companies Greenwashing Gulf Coast Cleanup?

by Anne Landman — August 2, 2010 - 3:04pm

Sandra Bullock, Lenny Kravitz, Harry Shearer and a slew of other celebrities jumped on the bandwagon to star in a public service announcement called "Be the One," to support Restore the Gulf, a campaign to encourage people to sign a petition saying, "I demand th

Main Source: 
Think Progress, July 29, 2010

BP "Photoshopped" Gulf Response Pictures

by Anne Landman — July 24, 2010 - 1:32pm

BP officials have admitted that members of its staff manipulated official images posted on its Gulf of Mexico Response Web site, and promised to stop the practice. The most recent photo, apparently taken from inside a helicopter cockpit, was altered to make it look as though the helicopter was flying.

Main Source: 
UK Telegraph, July 22, 2010

Chez Sludge: How the Sewage Sludge Industry Bedded Alice Waters

by John Stauber — July 9, 2010 - 9:28am
  • Topics: Agriculture, Crisis Management, Journalism, Sludge, Environment, Ethics, Public Relations

    • The celebrity chef Alice Waters is probably the world's most famous advocate of growing and eating local, Organic food. In February 2010 her Chez Panisse Foundation chose as its new Executive Director the wealthy "green socialite" and liberal political activist Francesca Vietor. Vietor's hiring created a serious conflict of interest that has married Waters and her Foundation to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) and its scam of disposing of toxic sewage sludge waste as free "organic Biosolids compost" for gardens.

    For the first time, thanks to an ongoing "open records" investigation by the Food Rights Network, the public and the press have easy online access to dozens of internal SFPUC files (SFPUC Sludge Controversy Timeline), documenting the strange tale of Chez Sludge, or how the sewage industry bedded Alice Waters.

    Government Bans Reporters in Gulf

    by Anne Landman — July 7, 2010 - 3:02pm

    The U.S. Coast Guard put in place a new rule slapping journalists with felony charges, a $40,000 fine and one to five years in prison for coming too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission.

    Main Source: 
    Raw Story, July 4, 2010

    BP Buys Search Terms to Redirect Users to Company Web Site

    by Anne Landman — June 8, 2010 - 2:02pm

    BP has purchased search terms relating to the Gulf oil spill disaster on Google, Yahoo and Bing, a move some say is designed to limit the public's exposure to news reporting about the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe.

    Main Source: 
    ABC News, June 5, 2010

    BP Blocking Media Access to Oil Disaster Sites

    by Anne Landman — May 28, 2010 - 11:54pm

    News photographers are saying that their efforts to document the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials working with BP.

    Main Source: 
    Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), May 27, 2010

    Obama's Offshore Drilling Moratorium -- Not!

    by Anne Landman — May 24, 2010 - 11:24pm

    On April 30, President Obama announced that he was slapping a moratorium on drilling permits for new offshore wells, and would stop handing out the kind of controversial environmental waivers the Administration gave the ill fated Deepwater Horizon rig -- but those pronounce

    Main Source: 
    New York Times, May 23, 2010

    How Much Oil Is Really Spilling into the Gulf of Mexico?

    by Anne Landman — May 13, 2010 - 11:43am
  • Topics: Crisis Management, Corporations, Environment

    • Map of Gulf spill on May 8, with fishing closure areaAt first, right after the BP Deepwater Horizon offshore rig exploded on April 20, BP and U.S. government officials reported the underwater well was pumping about 1,000 barrels a day into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. A few days later, that figure was challenged by the non-profit group SkyTruth, which uses remote sensing and digital mapping to evaluate environmental issues globally. Ten days later, by April 30, some industry experts said the well could be leaking at a rate of 5,000 barrels daily -- five times the previous estimate, and the one that has been the most widely and persistently used in the media.

    Wildly Disparate Estimates

    But estimates continue to change. On May 4th, BP executives in a closed-door meeting reportedly told Congress that the well is discharging anywhere from 5,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf per day. At 42 U.S. gallons per barrel, that means the spill could be growing by 210,000 to 2.52 million gallons of oil each day. But how much is that, really?

    SourceWatch Preserves History Unwritten by the Family Research Council

    by Lisa Graves — May 10, 2010 - 10:14pm
  • Topics: Crisis Management

    • Dr. George Rekers of Family Research CouncilRecently, SourceWatch helped preserve history when the Family Research Council (FRC) deleted one of its co-founders from its website after he was caught in an embarrassing scandal. The FRC was co-founded by James Dobson and George Rekers, and the organization attempts to inject what it considers to be evangelical Christian values into the public debate. Most recently, as noted in SourceWatch, the FRC held a "prayercast" against health insurance reform in which Dobson publicly prayed that his savior would "frustrate the plans of the Evil One and revive us again with conviction and forgiveness,” referring to the President of the United States, Barack Obama.

    NY Times Fails to Disclose Crucial Information About Conservation "Expert"

    by Anne Landman — May 7, 2010 - 3:19pm

    A news analysis article on the front page of the May 4 New York Times about the Gulf oil spill was titled "Gulf Oil Spill is Bad, but How Bad?" It quoted an "expert," Quenton R.

    Main Source: 
    Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, May 4, 2010
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