A Timeline of The New York Times Reporting…
| Date Published | Title of Article |
| March 25th | Largest U.S. Tanker Spill Spews 270000 Barrels of Oil Off Alaska |
| March 30th | Oil on the Water and Oil in the Ground |
| April 4th | Oil Can Be Replaced |
| April 5th | Oil and Dirty Hands |
Reporting began a day after the incident happened, and is mostly in the form of getting information out, and investigating why the incident happened.
This continues till March 30th, when the first Opinion piece published. The New York Times gave it almost a week since the incident to wait to publish any opinion on this. The opinion pieces started to flow after this date. It almost seemed like there was a threshold to how much time the NewYork Times wanted to wait before publishing Opinion.
The opinion pieces do try to be objective in such a grim situation. Slowly though, the suggestions or solutions offered seem more leaned towards a liberal, environmentalist agenda. A title such as “Oil and DIrty Hands”, for an article discussing the proposal to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling certainly hints to the author’s potential stance. “President Bush has said, that there is no direct connection between the wreck of the Exxon Valdez… [, but] Support for the bill is dwindling fast and won’t be revived without tough new regulations.” (Apr. 5th). Subsequent proposals did not pass through the ….???
Other articles such as “Oil Can Be Replaced” start the topic of alternative energy sources. An article that gives the facts of this spill and asks it to consider the impacts our actions are going to have on the future when trying to decide what technologies to support.
