Double-barreled disaster

The BP oil spill is two media events: one environmental and one political.

The ecological and economic disaster - oily pelicans, tar balls, empty restaurants, grounded fishing fleets - has prompted monumental media coverage charged with outrage and frustration. Add politics, and this combustible mixture has flared into a second story as white-hot as the first.

Ever since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which killed 11 people, today's fractionated, diverse media world - cable TV, public radio, Internet - has shown that it can cover multiple angles of a complex story.

With myriad images of natural and human suffering, the eco-disaster is made for TV. And TV, especially 24/7 cable, has responded, with dramatic photos, video, maps and charts, BP's live cam of the underwater pipe always spewing, satellite shots of the oil slick threatening the Gulf Coast. Spectacle called for, spectacle delivered. Teams of reporters walk the streets, row the bayous, sail the ocean. They interview locals who lament the spill, yet beg for tourists.

ABC News sent divers in hazmat suits to swim the oily seas. CNN's Kyra Phillips shadowed National Incident Commander Adm. Thad Allen, flying with him to the disaster site, trailing him as he held meetings and made decisions. CBS correspondent Mark Strassmann boated off Grand Isle, La., and lifted a net heavy with oil.

After such a catastrophe, says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, American Professor of Communication and director of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, the media ask what everyone else asks: What caused this? Who's to blame? How can it be fixed or prevented?

Jamieson writes by e-mail that it was only logical for the media to cast BP "as the super-villain that conned the public with eco-branding while taking shortcuts that risked the lives of its workers, the livelihood of those on the Gulf and the health of the Gulf."

That story line has made news coverage startlingly emotional. You'd expect the out-of-work fishermen to be angry. But anchors from Shepard Smith of Fox News to CNN's Anderson Cooper have also been railing on camera against BP and the government. "As a journalist," Smith says in a phone call, "it's frustrating being lied to this often. Those are the times I shift into emotion. They've lied to us from the very beginning, and that's not a matter of opinion. It's a full-time job, cutting through the lies."