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Comparisons between the Gulf of Mexico's oil disaster and the region's devastation from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 abound. As far as the network news is concerned, BP's crude oil leak does not yet rival the failure of New Orleans' levees. Not yet. At the end of its seventh week of coverage, the oil disaster has compiled a massive total of ten hours of coverage on the broadcast networks' weekday nightly newscasts (600 min--ABC 180, CBS 189, NBC 231), By contrast, Katrina logged a still greater 846 minutes in its first seven weeks, with NBC (345 min v ABC 241, CBS 257) taking the lead for that disaster too. The difference is that Katrina's coverage declined as time passed (from a weekly peak of 263 min to 213 to 145 to 73 to 70 to 55); the oil spill is gathering momentum (from 23 min to 71 to 56 to 62 to 81 to the last two weeks' totals of 154 min and 153). At this rate, the oil spill should be a bigger story than Katrina by midsummer. By that time, the oil spill would be overcovered: Katrina drowned a city and killed more than 1,800 people; BP's pollution has, so far, seen just eleven deaths.

Friday's lead story from Louisiana for both CBS and ABC did not concern damage to human beings at all. We saw both ABC's Matt Gutman and CBS' Mark Strassmann on their cellphones to BP's hotline to notify them of the GPS location of oil-slimed brown pelicans. Gutman described "feathers basted in oil the consistency of molasses." Strassmann reported back to his anchor Katie Couric: "It looked terrible, pathetic." On NBC, Kerry Sanders detailed the broader consequences for wildlife, pointing out that slimed marshland is a stopover for millions of migrating birds. Franz Joseph Land (in the Barents Sea) will suffer, he warned, as its tundra will be bereft of sanderlings, red knots and terns, all slimed in Louisiana's "goopy ooze" instead.

Andrew Tyndall 6/7/10 8:30:06 pm

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