Picture This: Yet Another PR Embarrassment, Black Eye For Beleaguered BP

The hits just keep on coming for beleagured BP, which continues to fumble its management of the public relations fallout from the ongoing oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. And it only has itself to blame for these ridiculous blunders, which look they they're coming from some novice, early-stage start-up rather than a huge multinational, billion-dollar corporation with seemingly endless resources.

In its latest gaffe, and as first reported by AMERICAblog, and then subsquently picked up by MSNBC, the Washington Post, Gizmodo, and other blogs, BP deliberately, and rather amateurishly, used PhotoShop to digitally alter a July 16 image of its Houston command center, and then released the modified photo to media outlets worldwide without proper disclosure.

According to Washington Post reporter Steve Mufson, "A blogger...noticed that the oil giant altered a photograph of its Houston crisis room, cutting and pasting three underwater images into a wall of video feeds from remotely operated undersea vehicles." The Gizmodo story actually reveals specifically where the alterations were made, and even more disturbingly, that its metadata clearly show the original image was captured all the way back in 2001. Here is a composite of the altered and unaltered image:

As if this is not enough, AMERICAblog further reported today in a follow-up that BP has faked ANOTHER photo on its Web site, this one of its "top kill" initiative last month to stop the spill. Check out the story here. The lead on this story sums it all up: "It's starting to look like Capricorn One over at BP," a humorous reference to the famous 1978 film starrring Elliott Gould and James Brolin about a Mars landing hoax.

Mufson hits the nail on the head in his lead, "Apparently BP is no more adept at doctoring photos than it is at plugging deep-sea oil leaks." And adding perspective, as well as accurate insult to injury in his piece on MSNBC, Wilson Rothman writes:

Though the command center alteration doesn't seem to be an attempt to hide facts or confuse the public, it heightens skepticism for the company at a time when it should be trying to build trust. As the AMERICAblog reporter John Aravosis wrote, 'I guess if you're doing fake crisis response, you might as well fake a photo of the crisis response center.'