Over the last six weeks in the United States, we have seen gradually unfold the true scale of two parallel catastrophes. Both involve industries stuck in a seemingly intractable rut; both have long-term roots, occurring amid a climate of irresponsibility and recklessness.

The first scarcely needs detailing. Perhaps as many as 4.2 million gallons a day flowing from the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico; more than 400 species of birds, amphibians, mammals and reptiles endangered by the toxic brown sludge; significant damage to the fisheries and tourism industries of the region. The second has not made the headlines, for a simple reason: because it is the headlines.

Commentators have rightly raised concerns about Obama’s populist rhetoric over the oil spill. He has talked about “kicking ass” and provocatively refers to BP as “British Petroleum”, a name it has not used in years. However, it would be misguided to see this, as Iain Dale does, as an example of a demagogical leader wilfully playing to the gallery. Rather, we should see Obama as a beleaguered executive capitulating to the increasingly ridiculous demands of an insatiable mainstream media.

Indeed, in discussing the federal response to the spill, the main talking point of the media pundits has been whether the President is showing enough anger. They want him to take control, to articulate the public’s ire; essentially, they want him to be Peter Finch in Network. “Man, you got to get down here and take control!” squealed political strategist James Carville on ABC News. “Tell BP, ‘I’m your daddy!’”  Obama has been compared to Mr Spock for his emotional aloofness. So unappeasable are the pundits’ demands that it is clear that no amount of presidential emoting would be enough.

The sheer absurdity of this bogus issue was shown by an exchange that occurred at a White House press conference between White House spokesman Robert Gibbs and reporter Chip Reid of CBS News:

REID: You said earlier that the President is enraged. Is he enraged at BP specifically?

GIBBS: I think he’s enraged at the time that it’s taken, yes. I think he’s been enraged over the course of this, as I’ve discussed, about the fact that when you’re told something is fail-safe and it clearly isn’t, that that’s the cause for quite a bit of frustration. I think one of the reasons that — which is one of the reasons you heard him discuss the setting up of the oil commission in order to create a regulatory framework that ensures something like this doesn’t happen again.

REID: Frustration and rage are very different emotions, though. I haven’t — have we really seen rage from the President on this? I think most people would say no.

GIBBS: I’ve seen rage from him, Chip. I have.

REID: Can you describe it? Does he yell and scream? What does he do?

A key role of the press in a democracy is to scrutinise the actions and decisions of those in power and ensure that they are held to account. Thomas Jefferson argued that a free press was the “only security of all”. What’s so sad here is that, while the US news channels are concerned with flippant personality-based questions such as this one, there are serious criticisms to be made and questions to be asked about both the federal government’s response to the crisis and its role in the events leading up to it. A fantastic article in Rolling Stone has related in detail the Obama administration’s record of sluggishness and mismanagement, both in its response to the crisis and in the months preceding it. Despite the initial plea to crack down on corruption in the MMS (Minerals Management Service), Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar left many discredited Bush-era managers in place and let BP, regardless of its woeful safety record, operate with few or no safeguards. It also demonstrates that Obama downplayed the oil spill despite foreknowledge of its severity.

However, we have here a US media that, rather than probing executive decisions and determining levels of culpability, focuses solipstically on hollow talking points of its own making; a media that looks not outward but inward, that rejects the investigative spirit of Watergate in favour of the inconsequential spirit of “lipstick on a pig”. In a world where alternative forms of communication are chipping away at their dominance by the day, the mainstream news sources increasingly have to justify themselves - and they’re not going to do it by wallowing in non-issues like these. Thomas Jefferson must be turning in his grave.

Filed under: barackobama, environment, media on June 11th, 2010