PBS: Reporting on Oil Spill, Limits Persist on Media Access in the Gulf
Health Correspondent Betty Ann Bowser and I spent last week reporting the health impact of the oil spill in Plaquemines Parish -- Louisiana's southernmost parish, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico.
During that time local officials and media contacts at the Unified Command Center Operations were mostly helpful in finding answers to our questions and providing us information about scheduled media boat tours of the cleanup operations (even if it did take sometimes take them a few days to get back to us).
But there's one roadblock that we encountered that mystified us -- and, we understand, many other journalists. It has been virtually impossible to get any information about the federal mobile medical unit in the fishing town of Venice, La. The glorified double-wide trailer sits on a spit of newly graveled land known to some as the "BP compound." Ringed with barbed wire-topped chain link fencing, it's tightly restricted by police and private security guards.
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