I have been musing at the prognostications about the outcome of the BP oil spill and the damage control of their PR departments running full steam. To wholly dismiss some of the prognostications may be a bit premature as I was reminded by the season finale of the HBO series "Treme" (spoilers ahead for Treme fans that have not seen that episode). Anyway as that episode recounts many New Orleans folks were convinced the storm would swerve at the last moment leaving the prognosticators of the worse case scenario wrong. In this case the prognosticators were right.
At the company I worked for in the 1990s I experienced close up a PR department deflecting a news story which had broken even resulting in CNN and other news media calling me about the story. I was told to refer all such inquiries to our PR department which I did. Fielding those calls was a guy who was a one time spin doctor in Washington, DC for a senator. At one point we trotted out the new VP of the development division who was perfect for the job since he didn't really know the situation that well. The story in general was a tempest in a teapot but as the CNN producer told me "it was a slow news day." Likewise when you have catastrophes like the BP oil spill their PR department will be getting paid to go into overdrive including posting comments on blogs and forums to try to steer the public perception the disaster. The government itself will be trying to keep a lid on things as they "don't want the public to panic." So only time will tell what the outcome of this spill will be.
