If you needed any proof that the U.S. is pretty much run by big oil, here it is.

In an apparent effort to control the coverage of the catastrophic oil spill (which, by the way, cannot be done at this point), BP is trying to limit the media’s access to Louisiana’s damaged coastline.

On Tuesday, several BP contractors, accompanied by two Coast Guard officers, ordered a CBS Evening News crew filming the beaches to leave and threatened them with arrest. On the tape, the contractor says, “…this is BP’s rules, it’s not ours.”

Since when does a private corporation own the shores of Louisiana? They are responsible for a colossal, irreparable, shameful mistake, and then they get to throw their weight around and control the coverage afterwards — and, then to make matters worse, the US government is totally complicit in all this?

Well, not in theory, says the Coast Guard. From their statement:

Neither BP nor the U.S. Coast Guard, who are responding to the spill, have any rules in place that would prohibit media access to impacted areas and we were disappointed to hear of this incident.  … The only time anyone would be asked to move from an area would be if there were safety concerns, or they were interfering with response operations.  This did occur off South Pass Monday which may have caused the confusion reported by CBS today.

Article from Gawker