Reporters suffer oil spill harassment

In a posting two weeks ago, US coast guards harass journalists covering BP's oil spill, I detailed claims that reporters were being prevented freely from the beaches and in the air in the Gulf of Mexico.

The situation appears to have worsened since then, with jobsworth officials hassling journalists. HuffPost claims:

BP has exerted no small effort in keeping the press at arm's length from the story. They've been barring reporters from oil drenched areas, forbidden aerial flyovers, clamped down on shooting photos of the dead wildlife, and basically worked hard to give reporters the runaround.

Then there's this video evidence from ABC reporter Matt Gutman being niggled by silly questions from a BP manager while filming a short item from an Alabama beach.

Example: The manager asks: "You mind if I ask why you've set up a camera right here while my guys are working?" Doh.

In a two-way with the ABC anchor, Gutman says: "Everywhere you go, you find police barricades, people telling you, you can't do this, you can't do that, or you can't talk to these people. We're not exactly sure why that is."

In one incident last week, a reporter and photographer from the New York Daily News were told by a BP contractor they couldn't go on to a public beach on Grand Isle, Louisiana, one of the areas most heavily affected by the spill.

The contractor summoned a local sheriff, who then told the reporter, Matthew Lysiak, that news media had to fill out paperwork and then be escorted by a BP official to obtain access to the beach. "It's just irrational," observed Lysiak, talking to the New York Times.

Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor at the Associated Press, told the Times the situation was not unlike the embedding of reporters with the military in Afghanistan.

"There is a continued effort to keep control over the access," he said. "And even in places where the government is cooperating with us to provide access, it's still a problem because it's still access obtained through the government."

Despite the problems, the US press is doing its level best to report to readers on the scale of the spill. I rather like this simple NY Times graphic. Click the Play button and watch the oil slick grow day by day from 22 April.

Sources: New York Times/HuffPost/ABC