Flooding Fiction

Yes, those are rushing Mississippi River flood waters - a torrent pouring virtually harmlessly into Lake Pontchatrain. No, no one is losing their home, business or life in front of them. Officials opened the Bonnet Carre Spillway a few days ago to prevent flooding of New Orleans, Baton Rouge and more importantly (in some folks minds) the endless number of chemical plants and oil refineries that edge the immediate shore behind the Levees between Baton Rouge and The Big Easy.

I'm in Louisiana to document the Mississippi River flood waters for National Audubon Society (more on why it's important to a bird group in a later posting.) Just saw a CNN report this morning from Morgan City, Louisiana - about 85 southwest of New Orleans. The reporter was standing in front of a old house I looked at yesterday, but decided not to photograph because it just wasn't all that dramatic, the flooding around its raised foundation. The owners were working, unrushed and jovial, to jack it up six feet to save it from possible rising waters. They told me they needed to do it anyway, save the place from future river rises (in this case the Atchafalaya River that rolls past waterfront Morgan City.) CNN put their reporter in hip-waders and had him stand in a foot of water with the house behind him reporting - it certainly had the visual feeling of impending doom - yet I know exactly where the camerman was standing - s/he and camera were plenty dry, as was the rest of Morgan City behind them. Good reporting or flooding fiction? Maybe just not the "whole" truth. Actually more the "misleading" truth by not showing the whole story. Oh well - the difference between media and journalism.

What was most frustrating is this is a network (CNN) that has its star anchor/journalist, Anderson Cooper, doing a spot on his nightly AC360 program in which he exposes others for not telling the truth, or "misleading" the truth. A bit hypocritical?

Undoubtedly there are people impacted by the most dramatic flooding of the Mississippi River since the record floods of 1927 (great book about that event - Rising Tide by John M. Barry) which created much of the levee building mess we are in today and altered the life of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, and ultimately the entire Mississippi Delta. And those people do indeed need there stories told. On a larger scale we need to be discussing now, while this is front and center in everyone's sights (thank you media hype) that this river, one of the three greatest river systems in the world, and worth more billions of dollars to this nation (in addition to sculpting much of its history, physically, politically and economically) needs help and attention.

Pub, Pints and Petroleum Politics

I don't know if I always had a journalist gene, or it's just something that intertwines itself within the double-helix for curiosity, but stories that don't walk a straight line fascinate me. Especially stories that don't just dip their toes, but wade waist deep into the confluence of environment, politics, conservation, money. Any one of those, combined with the erraticism of human nature, would be enough, but find that wedding of the waters and you better start looking at the local levies - something eventually will give. Maybe what intrigues me even more are the convolutions that the various channels take, and the moments of serendipity. Those moments I'm finding are often over a pint in a pub.

You can just call it drinking, but it's more. It's journalistic in perhaps the oldest sense of the craft. A filtering process refined in the great newspapers and radio days, and polished in the early years of television. Sorting on the fly what is and isn't helpful verses pure raconteur BS - which of course can always lend a bit of color. Out side the DC beltway, and unless you are overseas, there seems to be less hard stuff being drunk these days, but a couple craft beers, local brews, do just fine.

Some watering holes work better than others. Each locale has its flavor and approach. I'm not skilled at them all - yet. For example I'm not good with bad beer. In other words, fishing dock lounges are my Achilles heal. The kinda places where the lingering combination of grease and cigarette smoke veneer even the clean flatware, and the smell haunts you in your motel room even the next morning as you stare in disbelief at the paisley-plaid curtains (yes, somebody really did think combining those two was a good design idea.) Places where nothing on tap, or more often bottled, is darker going in that it is coming out. Beers often referred to by the person behind the bar as "beer product" and generally bear the label "lite". And all of the establishments start and end with someone's first name - women's names are the worst for me, they hold the promise of cleanliness going in, then dash your hope and smother your senses.

Yesterday afternoon I visited one of my favorite pubs here on New Orleans' Magazine Street - finally yielding to that little voice. The same little voice that over the years tells me, "talk to that guy or gal sitting next to you" and I finally relent to discover a valuable lead or relationship that far exceeds the cost of the local draft microbrew.

There were just two of us sitting outside at 4PM and serendipity killed the power on the outlet he was using. So laptop in one hand, pint in the other, here he came. Sharing an outlet bonds you in this digital age, the way a bad cab ride or train trip did a couple decades ago, or a five-day monsoonal rainstorm in the third-world still can.

An hour later, and half a pint (second round) remaining, we shut laptops and commented on the weather - snow up north in home towns. My home town, Portland, was his envy. After this was over he would like to head there. This, turned out to be the BP mess. Serendipity. Much of the next several minutes was peppered with him saying, "off the record", but, in their turn comments, facts and anecdotal debris floated down several of the above mentioned channels, pushing me closer to the confluence of this oil mess. Information like, there are places people just aren't looking, "there's $5 billion in charter fishing in the Gulf", why isn't anyone talking to these guys. Yes, follow the money.

I'm headed for Grand Isle this weekend based on that last half pint. My Nawlins "Deep Throat" connected me to other activities, separate, out of Grand Isle. A coastal confluence. All channels seem to be flowing south to Grand Isle - now if the island just had a good pub!

PS - I debated on where to post this, here or over on my general blog Perambulations - in the end both - it's as much a Louisiana/Gulf story as general journalists journey.

Embedded... in oil... and much more

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.”
- the Beatles

Over the past few weeks I have embedded far more information about the Gulf ecosystem and the mismanagement of natural resources into my brain than I really care to know. "Embedded" is a word that has been troubling me for about 10 years, since it was first applied to the other Gulf war, that other oil mess, and the feeling continues to churn in my gut, like one of the parasites I once picked up in the Congo. This one just won't go away. My saying then was "better living through chemistry", this time that joke's punch line has a petrochemical stench to it.

"Embedded" was initially used in the media coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The US military reacted to pressure from news media who were growing frustrated by the level of access granted by the Bush (Sr.) Administration during the 1991 Gulf War and in the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan (Bush Jr). Lt. Col. Rick Long, the former head of media relations for the U.S. Marine Corps, managed the media boot camp in Quantico, Virginia, which prepared journalists for their war assignments. "Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment." Embedding journalists honorably served that end, said Long. BP, and in a complicit act, the US Coast Guard, are now going to attempt to dominate the information environment". Only the environment keeps growing (see map below).

As I have struggled with the "go" vs "not go" to the Gulf issue these past couple weeks, one of the issues that weighed significant in the "not go" column has been "embedded" media. It feels a bit like my friend who was unceremoniously ushered off the Nike corporate campus because he was inadvertently wearing another companies footwear, shoes that better fit his feet and wallet. If you are at Nike you better have your feet embedded in their shoes. It's hard to imagine anyone embedded in the BP media caravan and not wearing BP sneakers.

It is possible to sneak around in other shoes, sometimes, some places, but in my own country?

Amr Al-Mounaiery, Abu Dhabi TV correspondent: "After this war [Gulf 2003], I realized that we in the media are the soldiers of politics. Not the military soldiers. I am proud that Abu Dhabi TV showed all sides, everything. You can see CNN showed only part of the war – their favorite part. They didn't show any of the anti-American rallies or the civilian casualties. They just showed crowds welcoming American soldiers and clapping hands. It is selective journalism – like Saddam did ... This was the Arabic way. Now we are switching roads and we wonder: Where is America? Where is the American dream? Freedom of expression, where is that?"
– Excerpt from "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq – an oral history" by Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson

"Embedded" should never be linked to journalism, journalists, media or integrity of reporting. I have a great deal of respect for many correspondents who have worked the front lines of the painful and ugly stories, both wars of politics and environment, but I am also disheartened by our lack of Murrow-ism. Our lack of courage to demand more of the words and images we create.

"For birds, the timing could not be worse; they are breeding, nesting and especially vulnerable in many of the places where the oil could come ashore," warns Melanie Driscoll, a Louisiana-based bird conservation director with the National Audubon Society. Embedded means limiting, controlling the look and distribution of images that painfully picture pollution-soaked pelicans and other life - images that are powerful emotional arguments for getting off our oil addiction. Yes, it's still possible for a picture to say a thousand words (above), unless it's embedded, controlled and marketed, then it's only 500 words at best.

Speaking of numbers, here are a few, embedded in this environmental disaster. I'm not a numbers guy, but these are numbers basic to primary school math.

• Since the initial inky plume began spreading up and under the Gulf of Mexico, the price of oil per barrel has risen by $2.5 U.S. dollars a barrel. BP generated $4 million a day before the crisis, that figure has now risen to $10 million per day.
  
• When the accident first occurred the BP estimate was 1,000 gallons flow, then upped to 5,000 (which the US government trumpeted), then 10,000 was finally settled on after 5 weeks. Post several botched attempts to stop the spewing crude, a capture siphon was reported by BP to be collecting 11,000 gallons/day... okay, my math is starting to fail me here, but isn't that 110% ? hey why not, coaches ask that of their athletes, BP of their employees, why not their well heads? (That actually make good math, if a company can get 110% of the oil out by spilling it, that's more efficient and more profitable.) But let's continue... the cutting of the pipe was, BP reported, going to expand the output by 20%, and then they (BP) announced some success as they are capturing up to 50% of the escaping oil. So, does that mean 11,000 = 50% so there is 22,000 being released, which would be 20% increase over the original which would need to be about 18,000? Hang on, I'm almost done with this story problem.
  
  Now, as of June 16, nearly 2 months after this started the Government scientists today increased the estimate of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico to be upwards of 60,000 barrels per day. That translates into 2.5 million gallons per day; an amount equal to the Exxon Valdez spill could be gushing from the well about every four days.
• Okay, so is the BP capture 50% = 11,000 or is it 50% = 60,000/2 = 30,000? which = 50% of 600% more than they said? At what point do the numbers, or men behind them, lie?
• A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration video, shot as officials coordinated response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, shows that federal officials almost immediately worried that the oil well could leak up to 110,000 barrels per day, or 4.6 million gallons.
• $20 billion vs $27.7 billion cash - the first is amount the US Gov. pressed BP to set in escrow for partial clean up ($1 billion spent currently) - the second BP's cash generation in 2009.
  
  A couple more bullet points -
  
• New polling suggests 76 percent of Americans support some government limitations on greenhouse-gas emissions - yet, 53% believe off-shore drilling should go forward. (The Senate recently rejected a backward-looking resolution to discredit the EPA from Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski. “It shows that senators are now scared of being tied to fossil-fuel interests,” says Michael Levi, a climate expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. No numbers yet on percentage of those senators currently vs previously embedded in the pockets of major oil companies.)
• 2 cents - A tripling of the federal government’s expenditures on energy technology R.D. & D. could be financed with a increase of about 2 cents per gallon in the federal tax on gasoline. (more on this)
  

I'm a picture person - I've embedded a little map to bring this ugly mess closer to home - your home - just click on the tabs at the top of the map and move it to your home - or any other place you love.

James Carville, a Clinton campaign veteran who has criticized the administration's response to the spill, said, “We don’t need legislation, we need to utterly reject the philosophy that companies and markets are able to regulate themselves,” continuing, “Until you have that you’re going to have banking crises and environmental catastrophes.” Along with that I would also "utterly reject" the philosophy that as long as journalists (photogs included) are embedded in their subjects we will never hear and see what is and isn't being regulated and by whom.

So, "embedded", what has it come to mean? It feels a lot like a lie, or worse yet a partial truth. The kind that confuses our confidence and erodes our integrity. We have now for a decade embedded those few among us charged and challenged with reporting the facts, unbiasedly, in war and disaster - at the same time we have now been engaged in the longest war in American history and the country's largest environmental disaster. Something, maybe that "feeling continues to churn in my gut" sensation, tells me the two are embedded in one another.

other thoughts: Pros and Cons of Embedded Journalism

Photo above: A laughing gull mired in oil from the Deepwater Horizon on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)