Supplements

Commentary

By Liz Quirin

Media Need to Step Up

The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that has been unfolding for weeks on end has been reported and editorialized in blitzkrieg fashion for justifiable reasons: The damage to our environment can hardly be quantified in dollars and cents. Its results will be felt for the foreseeable future, and the oil continues its destruction without pause in spite of the efforts being made to stop its flow.

The media have been tracking the story with drive and energy, interviewing Gulf Coast residents about their lost livelihoods, their uncertain futures and their destroyed wetlands as they continue to track the efforts of BP. While these stories are extremely important, the media have an additional responsibility even as the numbers of journalists at daily newspapers and electronic outlets shrink.

Journalists — reporters if you will — with experience and expertise in investigation, should use the present crisis as a harbinger of possible crises to come. If this present catastrophic incident with the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon is any indication of the safety features put in place and followed by oil companies, the potential for more and/or similar disasters could be far reaching. How many oil companies are engaged in drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and what kind of safety precautions are they taking? How many have engaged in shortcuts or so-called cost-saving measures that may be endangering our environment, their workers and ultimately our futures?

Because it appears that our government can become too closely associated with some of the companies they are asked to regulate, the media must accept the challenge of finding out where other problems could or are occurring in this area. I say that knowing it is easier to chase a story after it has already broken. How many times have we heard one news organization or another claim “We brought you the news first.” Who cares which media outlet brought it to you first? Often, the first reporters are driven back to the editing table to revise or retract their earliest pronouncements because they didn’t get the facts right.

The local and national media must stop trying to be first; and those with resources to research stories not “breaking” in the present moment, must look hard at those potential disasters lurking on the periphery and speak up and speak out before the next disaster becomes a reality.

Some in the news media are beginning to look more like paparazzi than reporters going to a location where people are already shell shocked from the disaster. Residents are trying to decide what to do without jobs, without money, without a livable environment; they feel they are under siege, helpless to stop the disaster and unclear how to move to a better, safer “place” in their minds and their hearts.

If all of us — with the media leading the march — don’t act quickly and forcefully to save our environment from the forces that risk our lives and our futures, we will become like some of Louisiana’s wildlife: mired down and covered with the “stuff” that is squeezing the life out of everything and everyone around it.