Four in the afternoon

1. Two from fishbowlLA: Los Angeles Times reporters warned to watch what they're tweeting (link); and Los Angeles Times blogger Andrew Malcolm is told to remove a link to the donation page of Sarah Palin's political action committee and, in doing so, takes the opportunity to once again promote Sarah Palin's political action committee (link and link).

2. ProPublica has video of the police detaining one of the news site's photographers while he was working on a story about BP. The video also shows police giving the photog's personal information to a BP security guard - apparently refineries are a special arm of government. ProPublica

3. Let the outsourcing begin: Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the country, plans to design papers out of five strategically located hubs. No word yet on whether this means laying off local designers and copy editors. Gannett Blog

4. Track the Gulf Oil spill with AP's spillmeter. AP

Keeping us safe from a free press

Today's "To The Point" is about the new "safety zone" established by the Coast Guard that blocks reporters and photographers from getting close enough to the Gulf spill zone to do their job effectively. The show was produced by Katie Cooper. TTP

BP means "blocking photographers"

ProPublica reports that one of its photographers, working on an investigative story in Texas City, Texas, was detained by local police and British Petroleum security guards after taking pictures near a BP refinery. BP, of course, is responsible for the Deepwater Horizon well that blew on April 20, killing 11 people and subsequently spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf.

From the story:

The photographer, Lance Rosenfield, said that shortly after arriving in town, he was confronted by a BP security officer, local police and a man who identified himself as an agent of the Department of Homeland Security. He was released after the police reviewed the pictures he had taken on Friday and recorded his date of birth, Social Security number and other personal information.

The police officer then turned that information over to the BP security guard under what he said was standard procedure, according to Rosenfield.

No charges were filed.

Rosenfield, an experienced freelance photographer, said he was detained shortly after shooting a photograph of a Texas City sign on a public roadway. Rosenfield said he was followed by a BP employee in a truck after taking the picture and blocked by two police cars when he pulled into a gas station.

According to Rosenfield, the officers said they had a right to look at photos taken near secured areas of the refinery, even if they were shot from public property. Rosenfield said he was told he would be "taken in" if he declined to comply.

This kind of bullshit has been going on since the Gulf oil spill began.

Twenty-one years after the Exxon Valdez

Former Pasadena Star-News reporter Cindy Chang traveled to the small fishing village of Cordova, Alaska for the Times-Picayune to survey the lasting damage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Residents there, whose lives and livelihoods were torn apart by the disaster and who can still find pools of oil inches below the surface of the ground, had some grim advice for the people living along the Gulf Coast:

Despite the pain of dredging up the past, most Cordovans are willing to share their stories with visitors. They volunteer advice to their Gulf Coast counterparts, with "Don't trust BP" the most common admonition.

"Don't believe anything the oil company says. They have huge PR departments whose job it is to minimize the collateral damage," said Mike Lytle, a Cordova fisherman. "I hope you have better luck than we did with the oil companies." ...

"A lot of lives are going to be affected. It'll never be the same. It'll take years and years to work through it," said Bruce Robertson, who has fished local waters for close to 30 years. "Nice families will be broken apart. Businesses will be lost. It's not going to be pretty."

Every tar ball is an opportunity

It's hard to find inspiration in the oily muck washing around the Gulf of Mexico, but BP is trying. The company has hired a pair of writers, dubbed "BP journalists," to find, as the New Orleans Times-Picayune puts it, the "silvery sheen in the dark cloud of oil."

Unlike most journalists, these "reporters" are not allergic to positive news when it comes to spinning a tragic event. Instead, BP's Paula Kolmar and Tom Seslar have removed the blinders of cynicism and honesty to wax poetic about the cleanup effort. Here's Kolmar on the gift the oil spill has given her:

I saw the skimmers. I saw the relief well drill ships. I saw the support vessels circling the incident site. It was indeed a sobering privilege.

Indeed, she goes on to talk about the "ballet at sea as mesmerising as any performance in a concert hall, and worthy of an audience in its own right." It's enough to make one wonder why Louisianans are having all the fun.

In his travels, Seslar has discovered that Gulf residents see their plight as merely a reflection of what BP is going through:

Paul, a well-spoken man supplementing his Social Security income by driving a Houston taxi, sees BP’s current image challenges as similar to what he faces all day long.

Haven't we all suffered the proverbial failure of our blowout preventer?

Ryan Chittum at Columbia Journalism Review has compiled even more of these paeans to gushing crude.

If it washes up on a beach and no one's there to see it...

Newsweek reports on complaints from news photographers that British Petroleum, with the aid of local and federal officials, is blocking access to areas hardest hit by the Gulf oil spill.

From the story:

Last week, a CBS TV crew was threatened with arrest when attempting to film an oil-covered beach. On Monday, Mother Jones published this firsthand account of one reporter’s repeated attempts to gain access to clean-up operations on oil-soaked beaches, and the telling response of local law enforcement. The latest instance of denied press access comes from Belle Chasse, La.-based Southern Seaplane Inc., which was scheduled to take a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer for a flyover on Tuesday afternoon, and says it was denied permission once BP officials learned that a member of the press would be on board.

This morning, scientists said the Deepwater Horizon leak had probably surpassed the Exxon Valdez as the worst oil spill in U.S. history.