X-Press Pearl disaster and contrived confabulations

The saga of the MV X-Press Pearl, how it got to Sri Lankan waters, why the disaster could not be averted is a story that will be written for months; may be years to come. 

We live in an age when the first draft history is now a social media post. The first historic records of the X-Press Pearl sinking are also in digital format and on social media. The ship’s disaster is a case study on how social media works and how a multitude of sources can auto correct, a story line that interested parties were trying control.  If not autocorrect, they can make it really hard to change the trajectory of the story. 

On June 2 morning hours Sri Lanka time, anyone checking social media on the state of the ship, gutted by a 10-day blaze, could be forgiven to be confused that there were two ships with the same name anchored 9.5 miles off the Colombo port. 

Here is how it was (the time stamps on the posts are not Sri Lankan time, but Australian Eastern Standard Time, the time zone they were retrieved from).
The following is from the Marine EnvironmentProtection Authority (MEPA) Facebook page
So far not so much confusion, the ship is sinking at current location. Now comes this. 
The Minister in charge and MEPA say the ship is sinking and the Navy says nothing of it. Quickly the MEPA Facebook post was deleted. 

Credit to Kanchana Wijesekera, his twitter timeline has not taken down his post.  Few minutes after I had reposted the messages indicating that the ship was being towed, my WhatsApp lit up with messages from colleagues in Colombo. They alerted me that the ship was sinking. When I queried a bit more, I was sent images of the ship partially sunk. 

"The satellite imagery is from reputed agencies like European Satellite Agency and Copernicus. There was at least one story on an international news site that said there was an oil spill"

A few hours later, the Ports Authority confirmed that the ship had sunk. 
Interestingly, Wijesekera also tweeted that that ship was being towed to deep seas. 
It is a really confusing narrative. 
Made even more confounding by the lack of time stamps on the images.  We are sure the ship sank. We are also sure that it was connected to a tug, the images show that. What we are not sure is if the ship was towed and if so,  how far? Are these facts important? Only time will tell. 

Without all these posts, by the time any official releases came out, the story could have been stage-managed. 
Social media is the primary source here. The more authoritative the source is, a minister, a renowned expert or a state body, the harder it is to ignore the information as fakes. 
A similar pattern is occurring on whether there is an oil leak or not. On June 4, the International Charter Space and Major Disasters released satellite images of a slick that was extending north from the wreck. 

The Charter says it is “a worldwide collaboration, through which satellite data are made available for the benefit of disaster management. By combining Earth observation assets from different space agencies, the Charter allows resources and expertise to be coordinated for rapid response to major disaster situations; thereby helping civil protection authorities and the international humanitarian community.” The satellite imagery is from reputed agencies like European Satellite Agency and Copernicus. There was at least one story on an international news site that said there was an oil spill. 
Government agencies then said that they had conducted tests on the waters near the wreck and divers had also examined the vessel and that there was no oil leak. 

Monday night the Charter again released a new set of images it said were taken on June 10 and said “slick had a bright shimmery return against the background environment, indications of thicker oil”. 
Like with the ship-sinking, what we know is that there is a slick. What we want to know is what the slick is and what its impact is likely to be. 

The writer is a journalism researcher and a writer. He can be contacted on [email protected]