During the Bush administration, the media made much of political appointees supposedly editing and otherwise interfering with the integrity of the work of career federal government scientists, particularly on studies pertaining to global warming/climate change.
Well now the Associated Press is reporting that an inspector general's report from the Interior Department released yesterday found that the Obama White House "edited a drilling safety report in a way that made it falsely appear that scientists and experts backed the administration's six-month moratorium on new deep-water drilling." (emphasis mine)
Additionally, "Obama's energy adviser, Carol Browner, mischaracterized on national TV a government analysis about where the oil went, saying it showed most of the oil was 'gone.'"
In fact, "[t]he report said it could still be there," AP's Dina Cappiello noted.
Cappiello's story was buried on page A27 of today's Washington Post, but at least the paper covered the story. A Nexis search for "BP" mentions in the November 11 paper turned two hits from the New York Times, but neither story was about the inspector general's report.
What's more, it's not like the Times -- Motto: All the news that's fit to print -- didn't know about the story. After all, their environmental blogger John M. Broder ran a November 10 Green blog post entitled "White House Editing Caused Drilling Ban Dispute."
Not every major newspaper ignored or buried the story. For example, the Boston Globe placed Cappiello's story on page 2 of its news section this morning.
