Transparency: Obama Is Blocking Media Access To Gulf Oil Spill
That per the famously right-wing conspiracy mongers at, uh, PBS:
But there’s one roadblock that we encountered that mystified us — and, we understand, many other journalists. It has been virtually impossible to get any information about the federal mobile medical unit in the fishing town of Venice, La. The glorified double-wide trailer sits on a spit of newly graveled land known to some as the “BP compound.” Ringed with barbed wire-topped chain link fencing, it’s tightly restricted by police and private security guards.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services set up the facility on May 31. According to a press release, the medical unit is staffed by “a medical team from the HHS National Disaster Medical System — a doctor, two nurses, two emergency medical technician paramedics (EMT-P) and a pharmacist.”
For over two weeks, my NewsHour colleagues and I reached out to media contacts at HHS, the U.S. Coast Guard and everyone listed as a possible media contact for BP, in an attempt to visit the unit and get a general sense of how many people were being treated there , who they were and what illnesses they had. We got nowhere. It was either “access denied,” or no response at all. It was something that none of us had ever encountered while covering a disaster. We’re usually at some point provided access to the health services being offered by the federal government.
We tried the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals who told us to talk to HHS. HHS said they couldn’t provide us access and said they would get back to us about our questions.
We reached out to local parish officials, who told us to talk to Unified Command Center Operations. Unified Command Center Operations told us to talk to HHS… noticing a pattern here?
Ed Morrissey comments, “We certainly have noticed a pattern. Ever since Barack Obama took office, the White House has claimed to provide “the most transparent administration ever.” Instead, we’re seeing new frontiers in opacity. Lobbyists refuse to disclose $40,000 payoffs when they take jobs in the administration, the President refuses to hold press conferences, key officials hold meetings at Caribou Coffee with lobbyists to avoid disclosure, and use private e-mail to evade the Official Records Act.”
Indeed, and for what it’s worth when hurricane Katrina was happening there was effort to block out the media. The disaster, and the government’s response, were wide open to public scrutiny. Warts and all.
But the unfair coverage President Bush got over Katrina (along with all the partisan sniping and political agendas driving that coverage) is probably what is driving attempts by not just Obama but people like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to keep the details of the government’s response under wraps as much as possible.
Which is another negative repercussion of media bias. Criticizing the government is one thing. Attacking the government because you don’t like who is in charge is quite another.
Tags: Barack Obama, bp, gulf oil spill, transparency