The Great Pasha Bulker Media Beat-Up



Posted: Saturday, July 07, 2007

by Graham Kelly
Kelly Communications

The Pasha Bulker grounding and salvage from Nobby's Beach at Newcastle (June/July, 2007) was an extraordinary affair. People were flying in from all over Australia to see the grounded ship. Some people even crosssed the contiernt from Perth to witness such an unsual sight and international interest was also very high. I was there filming for two of the Australian oil spill agencies and so was right in the thick of it all and back in home territory. Although I have called Melbourne home for many decades now, when I was just 17 I rented a flat only 100 metres from where the Pasha Bulker lay grounded and used to take my surfboard out over the very rocks that could have broken up the ship as it was pushed onto Nobby's Beach.

It was an extraordinary event but the media beat-up regarding an imaginary oil spill was even more extraordinary. Apparently a message from the stricken vessel at one stage mentioned an oily haze on the surface of the water on both sides of the ship. This, I was told at the scene, could have come from ballast water mixing with some oil before being pumped out to lighten the ship. Of course, the media were scanning for just such messages and overnight this became rather sensational. The local paper, the Newcastle Herald, featured headlines screaming: 'Stain on high tide as ship's salvage stalls' and 'Pasha Bulker budged from beach but oil spill poses environmental threat' while its Sydney counterpart, the Sydney Morning Herald, countered with 'Pasha finally starts to shift seaward - but leaking oil'.  It wasn't just the press though that blew this out of all proportion - radio and television were equally to blame.

There was no 'stain on high tide' nor was the ship 'leaking oil' as those headlines say. 'Oil spill poses environmental threat' was also wrong. I was there and witnessed the oil spill agencies' very professional people combing the beach with headlights and powerful torches looking (unsuccessfully, thank goodness) for any evidence of just such a spill. Their craft was at sea also searching near the Pasha for any sign of a leak as was their helicopter. A full moon would also have helped in highlighting any oily sheen on the water.

The media would have witnessed all this as well. They were coralled onto the side of the Fort Scratchley hill just south of the grounded ship. It was cold (I might come from the region but I'd forgotten how bitter a Hunter Westerly wind can be in winter) and often wet and I suspect that after four days of this, with little progress in moving the Pasha Bulker, the media throng were getting a little restless. It doesn't help when you have the relevant Minister Joe Tripodi saying "the salvage master had decided to continue with the refloat attempt despite the spill and was making "good progress". However,none of those are reasons why the media should have blown the oil spill angle out of all proportions. They could have checked with the very agencies I was working with.

It's trickery like this that not only gets the media a bad name but makes business and community leaders wary of dealing with them.

It's trickery like that that made me write the 3rd edition of my book, Managing the Media, and publish it (www.mediatrainingebook.com) just before the Pasha Bulker salvage.


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