Who Can You Trust? Oil-Spill Edition

“Who Can You Trust?” is an ongoing look at some of the main players in the gulf oil-spill disaster. We analyze the media appearances and public statements of those covering, controlling, and combating the spill to determine who’s spinning for personal advantage, who’s playing to the crowd, and who’s closest to the truth.

The Containment Cap

Feat of engineering

After 46 days of oil spilling unabated into the gulf and several unsuccessful attempts to stop it, the containment cap seems to be working. This method won’t stop the leak, but it is successfully siphoning off at least some of the oil onto a ship. The full extent of the cap’s effectiveness will be understood later tonight, when BP closes some of the vents, which allow more oil to leak into the ocean. BP officials hope that once that happens, most of the stuff will make it to the tanker, not into the gulf. Of course, with almost 23 million gallons currently in the sea and now making landfall, this is a small but significant victory.

Pay attention: To how well the vent closing goes, and what percentage of the oil is being siphoned to the top.

Jon Stewart

Daily Show host

The funnyman returned from vacation this week, directing his patented brand of pointed criticism at both BP and Obama. Stewart expressed a lot of the genuine outrage and incredulity that’s been missing from the normally staid airwaves, but it’s obvious he’s still rusty from his time off. His jabs at the president for declaring the spill a “top priority” while still attending to the minutiae of government felt earned, but Stewart slipped into easy “junk shot” punchlines that were short on facts: yes, robots with diamond saws sound cool, but they’re actually one of the riskier options, and ribbing BP for not going to the capping plan sooner was a good reminder that Stewart is a satirist who dabbles in journalism, not the other way around.

Pay attention: If he interviews any of BP’s top brass. Stewart is best at calling out the doublespeak of talking heads.

Thad Allen

National incident commander for the Deepwater BP oil-spill response

Allen hit a rough patch last week, getting caught up in some of BP’s PR about the success of the “top kill” and junk shot. But part of his appeal is that he’s not a man easily flustered, and he’s slowly making a comeback. On Thursday morning, he both reported the semisuccessful slicing of the riser pipe while admitting the cut was more jagged than officials had hoped. Unlike the rest of the players on the ground, he does seem to be making steps toward greater transparency: on Tuesday he announced his intentions to be “frank” with the American people; he also spent the whole day with an (overly amiable) CNN reporter.

Pay attention: When he speaks. He’s still giving measured, sometimes bland answers to questions—after all, he’s a government official—but he is taking questions. Right now, he’s the person most willing to disseminate information to the press and the most in the know.

Bobby Jindal

Governor of Louisiana

Jindal has attacked Obama for the recently imposed gulf deep-sea drilling moratorium, saying that too many of Louisiana’s jobs are at stake, and that the state has suffered enough. Jindal’s in a tricky place right now: he’s an ardent protector of the wetlands, and it’s his state that will suffer the most from the consequences of the spill. But he’s also a Republican with higher ambitions, and he can’t be seen as being tough on Big Oil, even if that means advocating for deepwater drilling to resume operating despite serious unresolved concerns. Last week Jindal was criticizing BP and the government for cutting corners and being reckless; this week he’s saying the two should hurry up with some perfunctory safety checks and basic regulations to get drilling started again.

Pay attention: When he starts talking about wetland preservation and starts proposing more solutions and reform, not advocating for more of the same.

Sarah Palin

Former Republican vice presidential candidate

Palin went on Twitter to blast “extreme Greenies” for their role in the spill. “Extreme Greenies: see now why we push ‘drill,baby,drill’ of known reserves & promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR? Now do you get it?” she wrote on Tuesday. Then she took to Facebook  on Wednesday, criticizing “radical environmentalists”: “Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country’s energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It’s catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proves it.” But as Foreign Policy points out, studies show ANWR drilling would lower gas prices by only about 3 cents a gallon, while wreaking tremendous environmental havoc.

Pay attention: Never. In fact, the Guide might not double back to visit any more of Palin’s saber-rattling, so out of touch is she with the realities of the spill.

Google

Search Engine

According to the Fiscal Times, BP is paying big bucks to have its Web site appear as the top sponsored link for when users Google various oil-related search terms. It’s not an unusual practice—Obama’s campaign employed a similar technique—but experts quoted in the FT article say BP’s use is the most sophisticated. “BP gets its message, ‘Learn more about how BP is helping,’ atop almost every Google search permutation related to the spill, and effectively blocks nonprofits (with much smaller pockets) from getting their message across,” Scott Slatin, an executive at a New York–based search marketing company, said to an FT reporter.

Pay attention: To the actual search results, not the salmon-colored boxes that are sponsored by BP.

Tony Hayward

CEO of BP

Hayward released a video Thursday apologizing for the spill and promising to make it right; maybe BP decided that Hayward needed to be prerecorded to avoid another embarrassing gaffe. In the video, Hayward echoed the new catchphrase appearing in BP’s ads: “We will get this done,” he said. “We will make this right.” There’s just one problem—it’s pretty much impossible to fix the ecological damage oil spills cause. People are calling for his head, and Hayward himself seems somewhat resigned to the inevitability of departing his job—how but as preemptive sour grapes can you explain his “get my life back” comment?—though he’s publicly stated that he “won’t quit.” We don’t expect him to leave his post any time soon (who would want to step in at this point?), but it wouldn’t be a surprise if he does more taped commercials and fewer off-the-cuff interviews.

Pay attention: When you feel like yelling at the TV.

PREVIOUS UPDATES:

Volume Two: Landry Steps Back. Suttles Lays Low

Volume One: Academics, Admirals, and Angry Politicians

Additional reporting by Dan Stone and Ian Yarett