.@MorrellGeoff‘s piece in @Politico is no different than any other op-ed by any other company in any other publication
— State of the Gulf (@StateoftheGulf) October 22, 2014
When Politico Magazine published a piece by senior BP spokesman Geoff Morrell last week–chalking coverage of the slow recovery of the gulf from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to “advocacy groups cherry-picking studies”–it unleashed a tirade of criticism. Publications from The New Republic to NOLA.com questioned the ethics of placing a corporate flack in such prime real estate, especially one with such a controversial message: “BP offers a lesson in how to sugarcoat a disaster,” was the title of a response column in the Los Angeles Times. In the Washington Post, Erik Wemple questioned why the piece elicited such a heated response, when environmental nonprofits regularly publish op-eds. But BP doesn’t engage with the press in the same way, because it isn’t just any business. Wemple summed up his conclusion with a quote: “BP is the sixth-largest corporation on the planet. It is not a victim; it’s on trial for its mistakes.”
Politico has since distanced itself from the piece, changing the tag from article to “op-ed” and publishing an additional op-ed, “Yes, BP Did Damage the Gulf,” over the weekend by the director of an environmental nonprofit.
But Morrell’s message can be read as part of a larger public relations strategy, forgoing transparency and mea culpas and instead defining the narrative of recovery post-spill with BP as a victim of misinformation.
“Morrell is picking a narrative line, he’s repeating it frequently (not just in Politico) and it is BP’s new message,” wrote Abrahm Lustgarten, author of the 2012 book, Run to Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, in an email to CJR. It’s a stance the company has modestly confirmed, calling the op-ed “part of our continuing effort to inject BP’s voice into this important conversation and counter persistent misinformation about the effects of the spill.”
The company has a website, “The State of the Gulf,” launched in November concurrently with federal hearings to determine if corporate negligence resulted in the spill (a judge ruled the company was “grossly negligent” in September). “The State of the Gulf,” intended to “set the record straight,” has pages of articles, releases, and infographics that dismiss scientific literature and government studies to conclude that the effects of the 2011 Deepwater Horizon spill have been overplayed by a biased press and environmental activists. (The site’s Twitter account identifies fraudulent claims on BP’s recovery money; an overall tally of the frauds is displayed in a ticker on the site.)
And the Politico piece was not the first time Morrell made a similar case to the press. In early September, flanked by six security guards and a public relations associate, Morrell gave a similarly combative speech during the keynote address at the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference in New Orleans. In the speech, Morrell blamed the press for speculating in the harried weeks after the spill on its eventual effects and then failing to report what actually came to pass. (The full speech is posted to BP’s website.) “We should not be accountable for damages caused by the acts of others, or those conjured up by opportunistic advocacy groups,” he said in conclusion.
Journalists at the conference were surprised at Morrell’s confrontational tone and his conflation of peer reviewed and government-funded scientific studies with environmental propaganda. “He did not attempt to ingratiate himself with the journalists there,” said Suzanne Goldenberg, an environmental reporter for The Guardian who attended the conference.
His speech was “a combination of confrontational arrogance and a persecutional narrative,” said Peter Dykstra, the publisher of Environmental Health News, who compared Morrell’s tactics to those employed by climate-change deniers. In the speech and in the Politico piece, Morrell cites the most extreme early predictions by reporters in the days after the spill. Most didn’t come to pass, anecdotal evidence that the media’s reporting on the spill has been over-hyped. “Of course a lot of that reporting was bad,” says Dykstra, “it was reporting in the heat of battle. But that has nothing to do with the environmental effects of the spill today.”
Beyond BP’s own coverage of the state of the environment, the company has been aggressive about making sure reporters insert BP’s voice into their coverage. During the trial, BP had one to two representatives in the courtroom to re-analyze the remarks of witnesses for reporters.
“They’re very aggressive,” Mark Schleifstein, the enviornmental reporter for NOLA.com and The Times-Picayune who arranged for Morrell to speak at the SEJ conference. “Whenever we post a story, if we have not called them because of time, they’re on the phone with us within seconds of the story being posted.”
Including the comments of a company at the center of your story is generally good journalism. And the purpose of all PR–not just BP’s–is to deflect criticism and paint a narrative that’s beneficial to the company. But allowing BP to promote a narrative based on cherry-picked studies and anecdotal claims, incidentally exactly what it accuses the press of, makes it difficult to separate the facts from distortions.
And Morrell, who began his career at ABC News, is a dangerous man to lead this mission. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out in 2011, back when Morrell was repping the Department of Defense, he “is one of those countless Beltway officials who seamlessly travel back and forth between government positions and journalism.”
So far, Morrell’s conspiracy theory narrative doesn’t seemed to have gained traction in the press, and the op-ed has garnered only negative attention. Hopefully readers are savvy enough to recognize what’s journalism and what is a corporate dog and pony show.
Alexis Sobel Fitts is a senior writer at CJR. Follow her on Twitter at @fittsofalexis.