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Progressive Liberal

Progressive Liberal
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JUNE 7, 2010 3:03AM

Examiner: 'BP Buys Google, Yahoo Search Words'

Rate: 3 Flag

Examiner.com and Maryann Tobin are reporting that BP is trying to keep search engines from displaying the facts on the environmental disaster taking place in the Gulf of Mexico:

 

BP buys Google, Yahoo search words to keep people away from real news on Gulf oil spill disaster

 

In their most tenacious effort to control the ‘spin’ on the worst oil spill disaster in the history, BP has purchased top internet search engine words so they can re-direct people away from real news on the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.
BP spokesman Toby Odone confirmed to ABC News that the oil giant had in fact bought internet search terms. So now when someone searches the words ‘oil spill’, on the internet, the top link will re-direct them to BP’s official company website.
This would not be the first time that BP has tried to control information to protect the company’s public image.
Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, 2010, BP executives quickly underestimated the size of the disastrous oil spill. Some suggest they did it to avoid costly EPA per-gallon spill fines. The less oil spilled, the lower the fines.
A month into the spill, the public learned through independent science, that the spill was in fact a million gallon a day gusher. BP got caught in their own lie when the used a syphon pipe in one of the broken riser pipes and proudly proclaimed that they were capturing 5,000 barrels of oil a day.
With the oil obviously still gushing, they had to up their spill rate to explain the reported discrepancy in their earlier estimates.
As the dead bodies of birds, turtles and dolphins began showing up on land, BP used a private security company as their ‘oil spill police’ to try to keep photographers and reporters away from the true death toll from their spill.
Tides of black goo lapping a shore lined in corpses did not portray the company image Tony Hayward and his oil rich executives wanted.

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I don't know what they think they're accomplishing with this whole "move along, nothing to see here" routine they're trying to pull. That may have worked in the old days, but with all the new media and citizen journalism they can't possibly expect to prevent photos of oil-covered animals and such images to get out. Even if the press only got ahold of five pictures, those five pictures would be broadcast all over the news anyway. By attempting to cover this up they're just doing more self-inflicted PR damage.

The Google strategy is also idiotic--anyone looking for the real news will be able to find it just by scrolling down a little.

This is already being called the worst environmental catastophe of all time. If BP really wanted to generate some good PR, they'd abandon this brain-dead "nobody look, it's not so bad" strategy and just come clean and say, "We know how bad this is, and we acknowledge our responsibility. We're going to do everything we can to clean it up, reimburse everyone we've harmed financially, and make sure nothing like this ever happens again."

But it seems that disingenuousness is hard-wired into the corporate brain.
wow. you can buy search engine words? how undemocratic is that? i know that wasn't the point of your post but that's what caught my interest.

I think if we're honest, we can not expect BP to do anything different. And even more honestly, I don't believe they actually have a solution. Capitalism's only motive is profit, profit and more profit. So any technological "advances" or inventions are meant to produce profit, not fix environmental disasters; which explains BP siphoning oil from the "spill".

It seems even more imperative that off-shore drilling be totally banned and the search for alternatives be funded more extensively and actively.
I'm not sure why BP thought it was a good idea to PAY to have their name directly connected to the term 'oil spill'...
Ouch I didn't know one could do this...thanks