This article couldn’t be more right–in terms of online reputation management, there simply is nothing worse than British Petroleum’s handling of their recent oil spill. Online and offline, the press has been handled awfully.

“Obviously BP’s first priority is stopping the torrent of oil coming from the ocean floor a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico; the second priority (pursued simultaneously) is containing the damage from the spreading slick on the surface. Next to these tasks, formulating a social media strategy might seem trivial, secondary, or even inappropriate – but as marketers and PR folks will tell you, this should have started the instant the disaster was reported to BP’s management,” says Sass

It is easy to imagine why BP would neglect to tackle this problem online in light of the magnitude of the oil spill. But if they want to survive as a company with a decent image, they’ll have to confront their bad media sooner rather than later.