It’s about ethics in business journalism

Or, if you prefer, “time for another blogger ethics panel” (apologies to Atrios):

In an opinion piece published Tuesday by Politico Magazine, “No, BP Didn’t Ruin the Gulf,” author Geoff Morrell writes that the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, the worst off-shore oil spill in American history, was much less disastrous environmentally for the Gulf Coast than expected. He complains that “advocacy groups cherry-pick evidence” and “blame BP for any and all environmental problems afflicting the Gulf.” And then, in the penultimate graf, the first-person plural appears:

BP has said consistently, for more than four years, that it would do the right thing. We meant what we said, and we’ve lived up to our word. To date, we have spent more than $27 billion on response, clean-up and claims.

That’s because Morrell is no regular columnist, as Al Jazeera America’s Will Wyman noticed.

A Politico piece argues the effects of the BP oil spill weren’t that bad. Fair enough. The writer? A flack for BP. http://t.co/m4uNAvQH7n?

— Bill Wyman (@hitsville) October 22, 2014