CBS Denied Access to Shoot Oil Spill: Coast Guard and Contractors Say, ‘This is BP’s Rules, Not Ours’

How much of a challenge is it becoming for news media to report on the Gulf Coast oil spill?

A video released yesterday shows a CBS News crew being threatened with arrest and told “this is BP’s rules, not ours,” when trying to film oil covered beaches in the area.

UPDATE: Rob Wyman, Lieutenant Commander with the U.S. Coast Guard addressed the issue in a blog post today: “Neither BP nor the U.S. Coast Guard, who are responding to the spill, have any rules in place that would prohibit media access to impacted areas and we were disappointed to hear of this incident. The only time anyone would be asked to move from an area would be if there were safety concerns, or they were interfering with response operations. This did occur off South Pass Monday which may have caused the confusion reported by CBS today.”

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