Journalism & Media

"Six months after the BP oil spill, it’s clear that in the age of social media, a company can’t spin and rebrand its way out of a mess like it used to."

"A photographer who took more than 500,000 photographs documenting global warming worldwide is among 10 people who were named Heinz Award winners Tuesday. This year's awards recognized environmental challenges. The awards each come with a $100,000 prize."

FBI agents during the Bush administration "investigated members of the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace over their protest activities 'with little or no basis,' [a Justice Department Inspector General's] report said. Agents kept the case open for more than three years, even though no charges were filed, and put the activists on a terrorist watch list, it said."

"It has happened three times in two months. First with Time magazine, then twice with the New York Times. A story in a national publication says the Deepwater Horizon disaster might not be quite as bad as everyone feared. Government and oil company employees nod their heads, eager to send the message that their cleanup efforts are succeeding."

"According to recently leaked documents, the Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security has been tracking anti-gas drilling groups and their meetings — including a public screening of the film 'Gasland,' a documentary about the environmental hazards of natural gas drilling."

"A far-reaching federal program of research and analysis, funded by Congress and designed to help the nation anticipate and temper the mounting conflict between rising energy demand and diminishing supplies of fresh water, has been brought to a standstill by the Department of Energy, according to government researchers involved in the project."

The wildfire near Boulder, Colo., is still burning, with some 135 homes destroyed, making it the worst in Colorado history. Four people are missing. Meanwhile, as the reverse-911 phone system meant to notify people of evacuation failed to work properly, social media like Twitter emerged as the connection-of-choice in the tech-savvy community.

BP plans to release today its internal investigation of its own role, and any possible wrongdoing or errors by its own officials, in the Deepwater Horizon blowout disaster. Even though some key BP decisionmakers are not talking to federal investigators -- claiming ill health or the Fifth Amendment -- documents describing what they are alleged to have told BP are coming to light. BP would be legally and financially liable for whatever it finds in its self-investigation.

"In May, the company pledged $500 million for critical oil spill science. Then politics and parochialism got in the way."