Talk:Exxon Valdez oil spill

Conflict of Interest and PR Tone

Reading this article today it is apparent that sections have framed this article in ways that will give favourable PR to Exxon. I attempted to correct this, what was glaring to me. The section on fines was ending with a statement than Exxon had paid a large amount of money and completed the process of justice. This is in contrast to the history of penalties being reduced and drawn out. I added a concluding sentence that summarises the section and the information in the links more accurately. However, I think that it might be better to move that idea to the cultural impact section?

The section on health impact had an out of context quote from Exxon. Ironically the quote complains about a lack of citation, but it does not have citation and contradicts various reports of health impacts without explaining. Again this seems like a way to spin the article to say that Exxon was unfairly maligned. So I added another quote from the same article cited that more accurately reflected the source and the rest of that article section.

It was also strange that the article was saying that CNN had been making the accusation against Exxon, rather than CNN reporting on the accusation. To me that sounds like Trumpist anti-CNN language.

Despite my being a casual editor on wikipedia for about 2 decades now (I edited anonymously for years prior to signing up in 2006, back then signing up was a new idea, that I avoided for a couple years) I still don't know how to deal with PR from corporations or government creeping into wikipedia articles. It is hard to know if it is a deliberate spin or just something that people in our culture, so soaked in PR, put in without malice.

Nowadays there are a lot of articles about Conflict of Interest topics Wikipedia: Don't Cry COI but also some alarming articles in the wild about subverting wikipedia How to edit Wikipedia anonymously by Reputation X Look Better Online now that the interweb is so hyper monetized.

Anyway sorry for rambling and doing these edits clumsy. But I think my edits are important and needed. I welcome someone (who is not working on behalf of Exxon or BP) to clean up the entire article instead of just these band-aid fixes I did. I'm not here to accuse anyone, though maybe someone might want to look closely at who is making edits that leave the summarizing sentence of a section with something so favourable to the corporation discussed.

I wish I could put a Public Relations Danger Tag on this article. This is a very significant cultural topic about corporate power and our environment. I am not an expert on the topic. Is there A PR tag I can put on this? I don't want to do NPOV because it is more like spin than just that. Can someone smarter than me make a suggestion here? Thank you.Rusl (talk) 01:32, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Just an observation about the use of ThinkProgress.org as a NPOV source. Looking at the Think Progress website it appears that they are rather biased towards all sorts of progressive causes. This is kind of a reverse situation of using Fox News as a source. I would hope that there are more neutral sources of information about Exxon's handling of the post-spill clean-up activities and payment of damages. In my opinion, the use of the Think Progress citations are ill- advised and only shows a bias in the other direction of what you were trying to correct.Cuprum17 (talk) 12:59, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Most Clean-Up Workers Dead?

As a former clean-up worker and member of the plaintiff class, I was intrigued to read that "media reports" state that most of those workers are now dead and that their life expectancy was 51 years. These reports are actually one report, an anecdotal comment in Business Insider that was repeated by this person on CNN. However, no evidence was ever cited to by this person in support of either contention which is absurd on its face and apparently fabricated. Thus I have deleted this canard from the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.243.148.28 (talk) 15:09, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

And I have belatedly undone this WP:COI and WP:PRIMARY violation. Bataaf van Oranje (talk) 19:42, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

My father was there too overseeing the clean up project whilst in the Navy. He is still alive and well. Pickas90 (talk) 01:36, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

External links modified

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• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100613042140/http://www.commondreams.org:80/views04/0322-04.htm to http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0322-04.htm
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• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20080303100959/http://money.cnn.com:80/2008/02/27/news/companies/exxon_valdez.ap/index.htm to http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/27/news/companies/exxon_valdez.ap/index.htm
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090131001604/http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200806/062508d.html to http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200806/062508d.html
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20080304032707/http://www.hfw.com:80/l3/new/newl3a100305.html to http://www.hfw.com/l3/new/newl3a100305.html
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20050429003818/http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/lwsch/journals/bcealr/28_1/04_FMS.htm to http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/lwsch/journals/bcealr/28_1/04_FMS.htm
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20080203215034/http://www.adn.com:80/evos/stories/T99032456.html to http://www.adn.com/evos/stories/T99032456.html
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070630045759/http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/Publications/economic.cfm to http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/Publications/economic.cfm

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Introduction

The introduction states: According to official reports, the ship was carrying approximately 54 gallons of oil, which is about 11 gallons of oil. A figure of 11 million US gallons (260,000 bbl; 42,000 m3) was a commonly accepted estimate of the spill's volume

I am no native english speaker, so it might be my fault, but i am quite confused...perhaps someone can improve that sentence? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flo122 (talk • contribs) 08:00, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I think there is probably a mistake with the units involved. Maybe gallons was supposed to mean something else in one of the two uses.Wildernest42 (talk) 17:39, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Corrected. The first figure was about the size of total cargo and the second figure was about the amount of spill. Beagel (talk) 18:28, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

It seems that it was caused by the vandalism of anon IP-editor just few days ago. Beagel (talk) 18:40, 10 June 2017 (UTC)