The Gulf Oil Spill Reveals Media Incompetence

I am still keen on offshore drilling for oil in spite of the current slick along the Gulf Coast. We are too energy hungry while not seeking out new sources of energy to avoid tapping the natural resources we already have. Besides, not only is the sudden u-turn on drilling due to the stigma of oil companies as evil, greedy monsters who live to pollute, but when it comes down to it, people do not care if every tank of gas punches another hole in the ozone and gives a penguin a heat stroke for good measure as long as they ca save a dollar or two a tank.

Plus, I would like to reiterate a point made by George F. Will (who was serving on a discussion panel with Bill Maher and Al Sharpton. I would not have those two bozos as guest judges on America’s Got Talent, much less a Sunday morning news panel.) yesterday that we just buried 29 minors--a tragic reminder of what it costs to have coal energy--yet no oe is talking about getting off coal.

Well, okay. Barack Obama once got caught on tape saying he would like to destroy the coal industry for the sake of the environment, but nothing ever came out of that.

But now is not the time to argue the pros and cons of future drilling. We need to clean up the current mess and uncover exactly what happened so it is never repeated.

Here is the thing--virtually every piece of journalism I have seen over the last few days has been about the political issue of whether we should continue drilling, who should get the blame for the spill/the slow clean up, and comparisons to Katrina. I suppose all that is fair game, but why has no one come out and explained exactly what happened? How did the accident occur I the first place?

I decided to go looking online. It turns out some gas deposit was lit by static electricity and ignited. A freak accident that no amount of government regulation could have prevented. I am not even certain the workers could have done anything, but with the lack of information ut there, I could not even venture a guess.

I say this is evidence of journalistic malpractice. At the very least, it is journalists forgetting their job is to present facts to the public and not spend on their time on opinion pieces and environmental crusading.

Journalists dropped the ball o this one so badly, no one really knew for days whether the spill was an accident, eco-terrorism, or a government conspiracy to ed offshore drilling for good. I am complaining about more than the mainstream media’s liberal bias here. Thie lack of reporting here is plain incompetence.