Matthews Throws a Strike, MSM Still Drags Behind

Dick Cheney’s responsibility for the Gulf Oil spill has been carried to its logical conclusion by Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball. Matthews called for Cheney to testify under oath and reveal what he knows of those secret meetings he held as Vice President with oil and gas tycoons, while still being compensated by Halliburton (one of three companies involved in the spill). Well done, Chris.

Cheney’s responsibility was first broached by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and covered in progressive blogs, including this one: “Cheney has cause to lay low. His filthy fingers may be all over the right’s propaganda campaign, but the truth of Cheney’s responsibility and potential criminal liability is far more sinister.”

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Secondly, now we learn that the Gulf oil spill is 10 times worse than previously reported. Was this reported before now by the mainstream media? No one in the MSM, it seems, questioned the Coast Guard’s appalling underestimate of the real magnitude of the oil spill. Like herd automatons, the MSM simply kept reporting that the spill was between 3 and 4 million gallons of oil and could, could if it continues unabated reach Exxon Valdez proportions, as BP testified before Congress and continued its feverish attempts to stanch the volcanic flow of oil poisoning Gulf waters and the ocean beyond. The question that must be asked is, why this colossal, collective lack of journalistic curiosity, across the board, about whether the Coast Guard’s figures were reliable and correct? On 5/10, this blog reported:

Secessionist Texas governor Rick Perry called the oil spill “an act of God.” Barbour went further: “I think the most important thing is for people not to panic and not to assume the worst. Some in the news media keep forcing this on the public as the equivalent of Exxon Valdez. Well, the difference is just enormous.”

Really? The Exxon Valdez spill released 10.9 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, of which only 10% of the oil was recovered and the ecology and wildlife remains devastated. The three leaks in the BP oil disaster have been releasing an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil a day (Coast Guard estimate). Skytruth, a nonprofit organization tracking the oil spill estimates it’s more like 26,000 barrels of oil a day, based on satellite imagery and scientific studies.

On May 1, eleven days into the Gulf crisis, according to Dr. Ian McDonald of FSU, estimates of the oil slick indicated that 12.12 million gallons of oil, at a minimum have been released into the Gulf of Mexico, surpassing the Exxon Valdez spill. Five days later, at a rate of 1.1 million gallons a day, the spill will have reached 17.6 million gallons released into the Gulf, tragically making the Exxon Valdez oil spill a distant second.

If we can do it, why can’t the mainstream media earning the big bucks do their journalistic due diligence? We don’t trust them with our news, and neither should you. To get accurate, unfiltered information outside the mainstream grid, stay tuned. Right here, right now.