Newspaper Headers: Lost in Translation

June 28, 2010: It is not uncommon for a headline that accompanies a newspaper story to highlight the accusation rather then the facts or in this case the lack of facts that make up the body of the story.

Even for the same story, headlines can be different.

Take for instance the recent death of a local woman who was found dead in a tent. The Anchorage Daily News head line read "Woman found dead in tent." However KTVA television reported on the same story with a headline that read "Man awakes to dead woman in tent."

Same story...different headline.

This past weekend, two stories about BP appeared in the Anchorage Daily News, both written by ADN reporters, where the headline in no way represented the actual facts of the story.

Both stories revolved around the unfounded accusations of former employees or regulators that had a bone to pick with BP's safety record. But the hot point, or the main contention as it were, didn't match up with the end takeaway of the story or the facts that ended up settling the real life incident.

To make my case I have simply lifted verbatim the quotes from both stories and highlighted the lack of evidence the story provides to justify the headline.

BP helped state investigate itself

BLOWOUT PREVENTERS: Rig workers had reported cheating.

Intro: When two state agencies received complaints in 2005 that a BP drilling contractor routinely cheated on tests of blowout preventers and BP knew it, the agencies let the very companies accused of wrongdoing join the investigation.

Middle: According to documents in the file, at least seven Nabors employees appeared to confirm the initial allegations, reporting they saw incidents of falsified blowout prevention tests on company rigs in the previous couple of years. At least five employees provided the names of Nabors operators and supervisors who they saw cheating or who appeared to condone it, the records show. One Nabors driller admitted falsifying two tests himself.

Hot Point: "I just think it's a cover-up, is all it is," Mason, one of two former Nabors employees who made the initial allegations, said recently. "They're just working together to hide it."

Facts that negate the hot point: But when the commission issued its decision and order on the matter on June 2, 2005, it said it could not validate "anecdotal reports" of widespread cheating and cited only the two admissions by the single driller, who lost his job.

The commission found the violations "were isolated, not condoned or authorized by Nabors, and not harmful to personnel, the environment or the recovery of hydrocarbons," and decided against levying a civil fine against Nabors. Instead, the commission assessed Nabors $10,000 to partially recover the costs of the investigation. Nabors paid up without an argument.

Lost in Translation: "They had every opportunity to come in and talk to us, every opportunity to give us dates, times, places, and they did not do it," Commissioner Norman said.

Norman said the commission continued the investigation for more than a month after Mattson delivered his final report. That demonstrates the agency's investigation was independent, he said. If any Nabors or BP employee felt intimidated by the presence of company officials, they had plenty of time to take up the commission's offer to talk privately with state investigators, Norman said.

The commission's final report was issued June 2, 2005, as part of its decision and order in the case.

Commission records show it considered fining Nabors $25,000 -- Norman couldn't remember what led to that proposal. It instead settled on the $10,000 assessment. In addition to paying the penalty, Nabors agreed to more stringent test procedures to prevent chart spinning in the future, and BP vowed to supervise its contractors more closely.

"I have zero tolerance for anybody falsifying," Norman said. "If something is being falsified, that to me is the highest form of crime. The flip side to that, we have people who come in and self-report. If they do, we take that into consideration."

Norman also cited the agency's big fines levied against BP around the same time -- $1.2 million for a fire at a well that severely injured an employee, $102,500 for failing to report a high pressure event on a well, among others -- as evidence it wasn't afraid of Alaska's largest oil company, and the company that pays for most of the commission's $5.6 million annual budget through regulatory fees.

Summary:

The headline sensationalized reports of misconduct by former employees that the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission ruled couldn't be proven. Furthermore, the AOGCC conducted their own investigation apart from what the headline implied.

BP's latest blunder fuels critics' fire

Intro: "I have to conclude that there comes a point in time where we say enough is enough," said Jeanne Pascal, who worked 18 years as a Seattle-based attorney with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Because BP has definitely turned into a major serial environmental criminal."

Pascal pointed to three BP environmental convictions dating back to 2000, including two in Alaska. Then came what President Obama calls the biggest environmental disaster in the nation's history. The April 20 well blowout in the Gulf killed 11 workers and is allowing as much as 2.5 million gallons of oil a day to spew from the ocean floor.

"I think the people involved in what's happened in the Gulf need to spend a good time in jail and think about it," Pascal said.

Hot Point: "BP keeps saying that they follow safety protocols and safety is their goal and health is their goal and the environment is their goal," Pascal said. "But look at their record."

It's a sorry environmental history, she said, including:

• A felony conviction in 2000 for failing to immediately report illegal dumping of hazardous waste by a contractor at its Endicott oil field in Alaska's Beaufort Sea. The punishment: Five years probation, $7 million in fines and civil penalties and another $15 million to create an environmental management system.

• A misdemeanor conviction in 2007 stemming from the biggest oil spill ever on the North Slope. In March 2006 a BP worker discovered crude leaking from a Prudhoe Bay corroded transit pipeline -- 200,000 gallons in all. BP, which admitted its system of monitoring and preventing corrosion was inadequate, was put on another three years of probation and ordered to pay $20 million in fines and penalties.

• A felony conviction last year for the 2005 Texas City refinery explosion that killed 15 people, injured another 170 and devastated a community. BP Products North America Inc. was fined $50 million and put on three years probation.

Facts that negate the hot point: "Tony Hayward (BP's chief executive in London) traveled to Ak after the explosion to see if there were similar problems in Alaska as in Texas such as overly aggressive cost cutting and a lack of communication between mgmt and employees and found that there were."

Lost in translation: Nonsense, say the prosecutors.

"I disagree..completely," said Karen Loeffler, now the U.S. attorney for Alaska and in 2007 head of the office's criminal division. "The case was fully vetted and prosecuted to the best of our ability in analyzing the appropriate facts."

Loeffler said she and Nelson Cohen, who was the U.S. attorney in 2007, both were comfortable with the settlement and that ultimately Cohen made the call. She said it was "aggressively prosecuted."

"We knew everything that we were going to be able to prove," she said. And the $20 million fine, she said, "sent a very strong message."

Summary:

The former EPA Director has her opinion, but the Justice Department, the people responsible for prosecuting BP's action under the law, clearly disagree with her assessment and question her understanding of the issue.

Also, While many press accounts recall the explosion at BP's Texas City refinery in 2005, and the spill at Prudhoe Bay a year later, those incidents occurred before BP's current CEO Tony Hayward assumed control.

In fact it was Hayward, who in 2005 won accolades from BP employees for speaking out against the way the company was handling the Texas City disaster, criticizing his bosses for "a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well."

The press keeps dredging up reports of 2005 & 2006, when admittedly there had been a lack of focus on safety.

However, this is a different time and place in Alaska...but it reads like a Red Sox fan that keeps bitching about Bill Buckner letting the ball go through his legs in the 1986 World Series.

Moral: Read below the header.