Oil spill media restriction reports keep gushing unabated

We took a look at the Gulf oil spill coverage two weeks ago, and included a clip of a CBS news crew being threatened with arrest for boating too close to an oil-soaked beach in South Pass, Louisiana. After it aired, I thought the video of apparent cooperation/collusion between the BP workers and US Coast Guardsmen would be enoughto shame the Obama administration into developing a rational plan for media access to the disaster.

Apparently, I was wrong. Reports have continued of BP calling the restrict-the-media tune while government officials play along.

On Sunday, the Associated Press reported that a seaplane charter pilot accused a BP contractor of denying flyover access to the spill area after he admitted that his passenger as a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer. 

Then there was a report on Mother Jones' web site about how local officials at Elmer's Island, Lousiana seemed to be doing BP's bidding keeping reporters away from an oil-covered wildlife refuge.

But the most eye-popping, they-don't-get-it example of the administration's cluelessness on the disaster coverage was the U.S. Coast Guard's official response to the CBS incident, which included the following line:

In fact, media has been actively embedded and allowed to cover response efforts since this response began, with more than 400 embeds aboard boats and aircraft to date. Just today 16 members of the press observed clean-up operations on a vessel out of Venice, La.

Embeds are fine in a war zone. But for the federal government to say the media should be satisfied with ride-alongs with an oil company under criminal investigation for the worst environmental disaster in US history is insane. It just staggers the imagination.

I get that the administration and BP are stuck with each other when it comes to stopping the gushing well. But transparency and coverage of the cleanup should be an entirely separate issue. The longer Obama allows BP to bully the media, the worse the fallout for the administration will be.