Evidently feeling some heat over a corporate press release that somehow found its way into Politico Magazine masquerading as an "opinion" op-ed, BP took the unusual step Wednesday of issuing a corporate press release about it. If you're counting, that's two press releases for the price of one.
BP's statement-about-its-statement was issued by Jason Ryan, a press officer. It reads, in its entirely, as follows:
"This is an opinion piece submitted by BP to an influential newspaper to counter several op-eds about the Gulf that previously were published in this and other media outlets. It's no different than any other op-ed by any other company in any other publication."
I examined the original press release here. It's a statement of 800-words-plus headed "No, BP Didn't Ruin the Gulf," which ran in Politico Magazine under the byline of Geoff Morrell, who is identified as a BP flack at the bottom of the page.
The piece utterly failed to make its case that BP didn't ruin the Gulf of Mexico. Worse, it may have had the effect of prompting readers to scrutinize objective scientific research, some of which suggests that while it's too early to say for sure that BP may indeed have ruined the gulf, there are signs that its 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill may have done lasting damage.
As I observed earlier, BP has had a sizable commercial relationship with Politico. Earlier this year, while the company was fighting in court to overturn a damages settlement its own lawyers had helped to craft, it surfaced as a sponsor of Politico's widely read "Playbook" daily email blasts. This allowed the company to insert ad-like snippets in the emails, denigrating businesses and individuals that had shown the impudence to file damage claims against BP. In fact, BP is sponsoring Playbook again this week.
BP is correct that corporate public-relations defenses often end up as op-eds in newspapers, including The Times. It's not a creditable practice, and it's almost always cynical. Politico originally took the weird step, however, of presenting Morrell's statement as though it were just another story, labeling it with the tag "Environment." Only later was the label changed to "Opinion," which is still a bit misleading. (Credit Newsweek with unearthing the original display.)
Morrell's piece has elicited considerable criticism and ridicule, which is what presumably prompted the company's follow-up statement. Among other coverage, Erik Wemple of the Washington Post scrutinized the relationship between Politico and BP. Our favorite response is a look by Twitter contributor Telltale Blart at how the principle of BP's op-ed might have been employed in an earlier historical period. It's headed "No, Dracula Impaled No One," over the byline of Vlad the Impaler.
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