Coast Guard paid New Orleans man $18,000 to monitor media coverage of BP oil spill

[mike r]

http://www.statesman.com/news/texas/ap-enterprise-a-look-at-who-got-govt-912270.html

A look at who got gov't Gulf work
By SHARON THEIMER

...The administration has released details of about $134 million in contracts, a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars it has spent so far. BP has reimbursed the U.S. $390 million, company spokesman Tom Mueller said. The government sent BP a new invoice for $128.5 million last week...

Among all the contracts, perhaps none is more striking than the Coast Guard's decision to pay $9,000 per month for two months to John Brooks Rice of New Orleans, an on-call worker for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, under a no-bid contract to monitor media coverage from late May through July.

Rice told the AP that he compiled print and video news stories and offered his subjective appraisal of the tone of the coverage. "From reading and watching the media I would create reports," he said. "I reported either positive coverage, negative coverage, misinformation coverage."

The Coast Guard provided the AP with a copy of two of Rice's printouts of news stories but didn't respond to a request for copies of his reports rating the tone of news stories. Rice said he had already deleted them. The AP requested copies of all Rice's reports under the Freedom of Information Act but hasn't received them. The Coast Guard expects BP to reimburse the $18,000, Coast Guard spokesman Capt. Ron LaBrec said...