With many instances of disaster, media access is a point of issue and irritation. However, media access to BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as been particularly stringent, reports the New York Times. Despite endless efforts to gain access to the Louisiana coast, journalists "have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill" by officials from both BP and the government, writes Jeremy Peters. Even obtaining photographs of the spreading oil has been a struggle for journalists. A photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans attempted to take photos of the spill, but was greeted with a cold "permission denied" from BP officials.

But journalists are of course no strangers to dealing with difficult officials and denied accesses. As Peters writes, "instances of news media being kept at bay are just another example of a broader problem of officials' filtering what images of the spill the public sees."

Yet others suggest that the restrictions on media access are a result of the particular character of BP as a company. As a company that typically does not need to be transparent, BP "was not used to having public scrutiny of what it did," says Democratic Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts. Markey makes a good point, but BP's restrictions do come off as more of an evasion of bad PR, rather than genuine bewilderment at public attention-- especially as BP has continued to downplay government statements about the condition of the oil spill.

Moreover, Captain Ron LaBrec of the Coast Guard said about a week into the clean up process, the Coast guard began restricting media and candidates for public office from visiting the site together. The restriction came from the Guard's attempt "to help manage the large number of requests for media embeds and visits by elected officials." While the Coast Guard surely has a dense list of media requests to see the spill and clearly cannot accommodate them all, the restriction does seem oddly specific (especially as Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida tried to do just that, was at first given permission by the Coast Guard, then later abruptly denied access).

Finally, BP released internal videos of the oil spill to Congress, who then gave the videos to news networks like CNN. However, says Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor at the Associated Press, "even in places where the government is cooperating with us to provide access, it's still a problem because it's access obtained through the government."

The oil spill in the Gulf is truly a tragedy; however what is even more unsettling is BP's apparent (and deliberate) suspension of the media's rights for its corporate interests. Moreover, it somewhat absurd that the first real images of the spill were released by Congress, whose job is clearly not to release news videos to CNN. The situation in the Gulf Coast must be dealt with very delicately. However, it would be another tragedy if the media were denied the right to report news because it endangers corporate PR.

Sources: The New York Times, People's Daily Online