Sometimes the dfference between a real news organization and an increasingly pretend news organization is so clear you don't even have to read the stories themselves to know which one is deep in the corporate tank. Here are two headlines that illustrate the point nicely, both of them lead stories of the hour for their respective papers.
"BP Begins Attempt to Seal Oil Leak With New Procedure"
"After long argument, BP official made fatal decision on drilling rig"
The first is from the NYT, doing its usual cheerleading in the face of BP's malfeasance. The Times has been one of BP's easiest spins. They eat it up, and have been spending much space since the spill detailing BP's supposedly heroic efforts to stop the flow of oil. The other is from McClatchy, which has been burrowing under the BP spin to get at the truth, in this case that an arrogant, know-it-all BP exec (they don't hire any other kind) over-ruled his own experts in favor of - surprise! surprise! - the cheapest albeit most dangerous option available.
Company executives and top drill hands on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig argued for hours about how to proceed before a BP official made the decision to remove heavy drilling fluid from the well and replace it with lighter weight seawater that was unable to prevent gas from surging to the surface and exploding.
One employee was so mad, the rig's chief mechanic Doug Brown testified, that he warned they'd be relying on the rig's blowout preventer if they proceeded the way BP wanted.
"He pretty much grumbled, 'Well, I guess that's what we have those pinchers for,' " Brown said of Jimmy Harrell, the top Transocean official on the rig. "Pinchers" was likely a reference to the shear rams in the blowout preventers, the final means of stopping an explosion.
Brown said in sworn testimony on Wednesday that the BP official stood up during the meeting and said, "This is how it's going to be."
And so it was.
The NYT (so far) doesn't think you need to know that, or want to know it. They think you want to be reassured that the same people who caused the spill are doing all they can to stop it - within the constraints of cost-benefit analysis, of course, of which the damage they have no intention of paying to clean up is not a part.
If the NYT dives any deeper into the corporate tank than they already have, they'll soon be rivaling the Washington Post and FoxNews as corporate propaganda organs. It's a near thing as it is.
This is not something they should be proud of. At this point, stooging for BP is like making excuses for Eichmann or Pol Pot.
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