Cards on the table. This post is not about the oil fiasco per se. It is not a defense of BP. It is a question about fair and balanced media coverage. About lynch mob mentality. About bias.
There is no doubt in my mind – or any body else’s for that matter – that the gulf disaster is – well – actually – there are no words – and not for me to add to the commentary here. Nuff said.
I am English. I live in America. BP is a multi-National. And ‘British Petroleum’ (as Mr. Obama keeps calling the company) hasn’t been their name for 12 years. I guess partly because the ‘British’ bit was past its ‘use by date’. (Side point – 39% of the BP business is actually US owned.)
Read the main stream press, listen to the mainstream media all you here is that ‘BP did this’ – ‘BP did that’ -’when will BP pay us’ – ‘What is BP going to do’ ….. all good questions.
BUT I am rather wondering about that ‘noise’.
Last time I looked BP, Transocean and Halliburton (see note 1 at bottom of page on the click through) were all in this together.
That is you have contractors, sub contractors – and the usual collection of outsourced messes that make up today’s world. We know they are all going to blame one another – we also know that the buck stops at BP. One of the reasons we know that is that right at the very beginning Tony Hayward declared ‘mea culpa’. And yes of course – they are. But where is everyone else?
As I write – having checked out all three stock prices since this fiasco started, you will find that all three companies (BP, Halliburton and Transocean) share prices have been hammered in exactly the same way. (Are in fact STILL hammered). You can almost even track the up (and down) ticks working in synch. My interpretation is that the Markets believe that Transocean and Halliburton MIGHT – just MIGHT have had something to do with this – and guess what – when you read detailed opinion about this – those names also crop up over and over again – they too are described as potentially guilty by those ‘in the know’.
But where is the reporting mentioning them ? Apart from BP being ‘the lead’ company … the ‘responsible’ company – we also know that it is easier to spell than Transocean and Halliburton. In fact, I would argue that it so easy to spell – and so easy to say – that the sound bite becomes “BP – BP – BP” … you can almost hear the roar of the football crowd. Of the lynch mob. And the lead protagonist ? Barack Obama – who wants to ‘kick someone’s ass – and ‘stand on the throat of BP’. This from the ‘leader of the free world’ .
All I am suggesting is that the mainstream media might do well to talk a little about those companies as well. Because right now – they don’t. Guess what?
Transocean’s main offices are in Houston (oh and Switzerland and The Caymans) – think about that for two seconds.
And we all know where Halliburton heralds from.
BP – sure – the UK (if you don’t count Amoco and ARCO – I think that is where the 39% comes in) – but BP is listed on the NYSE.
So – here’s some interesting rough and ready analysis using our favorite search engine – Google.
I just searched for mentions in the text body of web sites for the three companies that are involved with this. (Involved defined by the fact that mainstream media reported all three names originally, that the financial markets seem to be hitting all three equally and we do still hear that the problems with the two companies not called BP are not going away.
Search 1 – search for the terms, counted as updates on the web in the past 24 hours.
‘halliburton’ – 173,000
‘haliburton’ – 91,500
‘transocean’ – 266,000
‘BP’ – 1.17 billion
Interpretation ? Across the web, all by itself BP has 2.5 times as many mentions than ‘both’ spellings of Halliburton and Transocean – ADDED TOGETHER.
Also that one third of the web world can’t spell Halliburton – but that’s a different problem.
Search 2 – search for the terms+fox, counted as updates on the web in the past 24 hours.
‘halliburton + fox’ – 18,500
‘haliburton + fox’ – 510
‘transocean + fox’ – 16,200
‘BP + fox’ : 930,000
In other words Fox and BP is mentioned nearly 30 (thirty) times as many as ‘both’ spellings of Halliburton and Transocean – ADDED TOGETHER.
SIDE NOTE
Notice in the first search that around one third of the pages couldn’t spell Halliburton – but now – when they are including the term Fox – the mispelling drops to about 3%. Well – Fox do give a lot of training in spelling – and Halliburton has got a lot of very positive spin on that channel – so maybe that isn’t so surprising.
Search 3 – search for the terms+fox, counted as updates on the web in the past year
I know it’s not an exact science – but the fox data is interesting – because if you did the same analysis of mentions over the past year
‘halliburton + fox’ – 4.87 million
‘haliburton + fox’ – 1.67 million
‘transocean + fox’ – 6.5 million
‘BP + fox’ – 37.6 million
In other words over the past year, ‘BP + Fox’ is mentioned around 6 to 7 times as much as the other three terms added together. (Remember that multiple is THIRTY times in the past 24 hours. Interestingly the ratio of misspelling of Halliburton is back up to about a third. (Spelling lessons are recent ?)
But There’s More
With some simple arithmetic, you can calculate that in the past year the term ‘BP+FOX’ averaged a daily rate of around 103,000 per day. In the last 24 hours, this reveals around a nine fold increase on the last years average.
Yet – when you look at the other three terms that averaged around 35 to 36 thousand per day over the past year – there is NO CHANGE. Their mention rate is EXACTLY the same day rate as the past year.
OK – so it isn’t exact science – but really is anyone else surprised that the past 24 hours saw mentions of BP is running at a nine fold increase on daily me
I’m just saying. I know the science is exactly perfect – but – having just worked this through in a simple rough and ready way – I’m now just asking ….
NOTE 1 – from above : This is the top link on Google where when I searched for BP, Transocean Halliburton – I got 2.63 MILLION hits)
