Tag: oil spill

Fake Twitter Feed Not Helping BP’s Reputation

Buck Banks

Poor British Petroleum. They just can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to stemming the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, preventing the spilled oil coming ashore in Louisiana or getting the Environmental Protection Agency off their back for using toxic dispersants to degrade the oil before it reaches the surface.

And now this — a fake Twitter account that satirizes the company’s response to the spill that has attracted nearly 37,000 followers versus its real Twitter account, which has only about 5,500. Worse still, the followers of the real account are mostly nerds — the EPA, U.S. Coast Guard and the White House — while the fake one counts Cindy Crawford, the Flaming Lips and Keith Olbermann among its followers.

The fake account features tweets like this:

We feel terrible about spilling oil in American waters, we’ll make sure the next spill happens where the terrorists live. #bpcares

Or this:

Please help us with rebranding. We’re not calling it an “oil spill” anymore, now it’s a “Southern Fun Party”. #bpcares

[…]

Verbatim

Trish

“The oil that is leaking offshore, the oil that is coming onto our coast threatens more than just our wildlife, our fisheries, our coast. This oil literally threatens our way of life.”

— Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, on May 1, 2010, commenting on the BP oil spill, which is shaping into the worst environmental disaster in the country’s history.

“For 30 years, opponents of American energy have cloaked their arguments in an environmental apocalypse. They have tried to make the argument that no matter what we do, it will destroy the environment…The people who work in oil and gas, their jobs are in the Middle East or Canada. We have exported their jobs. If this amendment passes, we are going to send the rest of them.”

— U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, on June 29, 2006, explaining his vote to lift a 25-year moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling in environmentally sensitive areas.