Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Thursday, June 03, 2010

Why is this supposed to be a secret?

While the corporate media have not been shy about saying that the oil well blowout is a big disaster, for some inexplicable reason they have been very deficient at showing actual disastrous facts. This article in the New York Daily News, by two of its staff reporters, tells us that it's all a big secret:

Here's what President Obama didn't see when he visited the Gulf Coast: a dead dolphin rotting in the shore weeds.

"When we found this dolphin it was filled with oil. Oil was just pouring out of it. It was the saddest darn thing to look at," said a BP contract worker who took the Daily News on a surreptitious tour of the wildlife disaster unfolding in Louisiana. His motive: simple outrage.

"There is a lot of coverup for BP. They specifically informed us that they don't want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence. It's important to me that people know the truth about what's going on here," the contractor said.

snip

After checking that he was unobserved, he motored out to Queen Bess barrier island, known to the locals as Bird Island. The grasses by the shore were littered with tarred marine life, some dead and others struggling under a thick coating of crude. "When you see some of the things I've seen, it would make you sick," the contractor said. "No living creature should endure that kind of suffering."


You know that if the nightly news were showing pictures of that, the public outrage would turn white hot. But they aren't, because BP is swearing its contractors to secrecy and the reporters aren't sufficiently enterprising to go and look. It's not just that vast areas are closed to fishing; the marine life really is dying.

Show us the pictures.

2 comments:

kathy a. said...

there are actually some photos now on the top page of the wapo. maybe something is turning a corner here.

Anonymous said...

here are some from the Boston globe, all of animals.

Horrible.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in_the_oil.html

Ana