There is no sense of urgency from MLive over the most recent Enbridge oil disaster in the western part of the Great Lakes

On Tuesday, MLive posted an article with the headline, Enbridge oil pipeline spills nearly 70,000 gallons in Wisconsin.

The article states: 

The 465-mile pipeline ruptured underground near Cambridge, a village 18 miles east of Madison. Line 6 is part of Enbridge’s Lakehead system. The 34-inch line moves 667,000 barrels-per-day between terminals in Superior, Wis., and Griffith, Ind.

Most of the rest of the article talks about other oil spills in Wisconsin, then shifts to talking about a pipeline that is being re-routed because of a battle with an Indigenous tribe, with the article ending by talking about Line 5 in Michigan.

There was also some mention of the Enbridge oil catastrophe over ten years ago that resulted in some 843,000 gallons of crude oil contaminating the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. GRIID monitored the news coverage of MLive when the 2010 Enbridge oil catastrophe happened in the Kalamazoo River. At the time, I wrote: After wading through the 32 stories it was clear that the bulk of the coverage on MLive was about the “leak,” political responses from Michigan, the “clean up,” and reactions from those who live on or near the river where the oil has been detected. 

In August of 2010, MLive decided to run an interview with the CEO of Enbridge, which was nothing more than a fluff piece. This article was followed by a piece in October entitled, Enbridge gives tour to show most of the oil from Kalamazoo River spill has now been cleaned up.” GRIID also critiqued that article, where I wrote: 

Sure the article mentions EPA requirements for the clean up, but no one from the EPA was interviewed for the story in terms of how the clean up is going. The Press writer did not speak to any of the local residents, local biologists or environmental groups as to their assessment of the short-term impact of the Enbridge caused oil spill. Instead they just took the word of the company that caused the disaster in the first place.

In the MLive article from Tuesday about the 69,000-gallon spill in Wisconsin, the only two people cited in the article was an Enbridge spokesperson, followed by someone from the Midwest Environmental Advocates. 

Besides the problem of providing space to Enbridge to make claims without questioning them, the MLive article doesn’t provide a larger context for this most recent spill, such as how many oil spills/disasters Enbridge has had in its history. I looked on the Enbridge website, which does not provide this information and the most recent source I found was from the source linked here, which also include this chart on the right. According to the chart, Enbridge has had 1,276 different spills in the US and Canada between 1996 and 2014. 

This is the kind of information that journalists need to provide the public whenever a new oil spill occurs, which it most certainly will. If the data that is provided in the 350.org report linked just above is accurate, then over an 18 year period Enbridge averaged 70.8 oil spills a year from 1996 to 2014. Context is vitally important and can provide the public with a greater sense of urgency around whether or not they want Enbridge pipeline running through the largest body of fresh water on the planet, the Great Lakes.