Text 13066, 60 rader
Skriven 2010-05-02 13:31:00 av Ross Sauer (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: Oil rig accident blame
==============================
Yeah, Newsbusters knows who's to blame for that oil rig explosion...
(sarcasm off)

NewsBusters Eager to Blame Obama for Oil Spill
Topic: NewsBusters

NewsBusters is suspiciously eager to blame President Obama for the
massive oil spill off Louisiana -- as opposed to, say, the oil company
that operated the drilling rig that exploded.

In an April 30 post, Noel Sheppard repeated a claim by right-wing radio
host Mark Levin that "it took the Obama administration eight days to do
anything about this oil spill," adding, "why AREN'T so-called
journalists asking WHY it took the Obama administration so long to
respond to this environmental crisis?"

But Sheppard and Levin are lying. In fact, not only did federal
officials, led by the Coast Guard, take a leading role in the initial
emergency response to the explosion, as early as April 23 the Coast
Guard was "focused on mitigating the impact of the product currently in
the water." Complicating things was the fact that BP, the oil company
that operated the rig, underplayed the extent of the spill -- due to "a
self-policing system that trusted a commercial operator to take care of
its own mishap even as it grew into a menace imperiling Gulf Coast
nature and livelihoods from Florida to Texas" -- leading to an initial
limited response to it by the government. Once the extent of the spill
was clear, the feds moved in with full force.

Nevertheless, Sheppard -- eager to portray this as "Obama's Katrina" --
highlighted a New York Times editorial that was, in Sheppard's words,
"pointing a finger straight at Barack Obama." Sheppard overlook the fact
that the editorial also stated that BP "seems to have been slow to ask
for help." That suggests to us that if the Obama administration had
moved swiftly and taken control of the cleanup operation from BP early
on, Sheppard would be portraying it as a socialist takeover of the oil
company.

Sheppard went on to whine that Obama's weekly media address was about
something other than the spill: "Wow! Our nation is facing possibly its
worst oil-related disaster in history, and our President is concerned
about campaign finances." Sheppard later sneered, 'Obama is currently
speaking at a commencement address to the University of Michigan. Is
that also more important than dealing with this crisis?"

In none of these posts does Sheppard address the culpability of BP in
the spill.

Meanwhile, Rich Noyes also repeated the Times editorial, adding that
"The last time a major disaster threatened the U.S. Gulf Coast,
journalists dropped any pretense of objectivity and openly scorned what
they saw as the ineffective response of the Bush administration to
Hurricane Katrina." Noyes ignores that, unlike the oil spill, the impact
of Katrina was immediately clear, and there wasn't an oil company trying
to hid the full extent of the disaster from the government, hindering a
full federal response.

http://tinyurl.com/2ev6zxp

--- Xnews/5.04.25
 * Origin: Fidonet Via Newsreader - http://www.easternstar.info (1:123/789.0)