From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week, a House committee held public hearings on the BP oil disaster, where BP CEO Tony Hayward underwent a grilling.

For weeks, both legislators and experts on cable news have tried to put the mounting disaster

in perspective by making comparisons to the size of the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.

20 years ago, the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons in the water there. And fishermen say

to put that in perspective for you, the Exxon-Valdives bill

dumped 11 million gallons of oil. It was a tremendous destructive catastrophe for Alaska,

and it was only 11 million gallons of oil. But where did that figure 11 million gallons come

from? Many people, including Ricky Ott, a marine toxicologist, author, and

former commercial fisher, argues that 11 million was Exxon's very early estimate and not the actual

amount. But who was in Alaska during the Exxon Valdez spill says it was a dubious figure from

the start. Right off the bat, day one, when I was in Cordova, flying over to Valdives,

we heard that there was a low-end estimate of 10.4 million gallons

and a high-end estimate of 38 million gallons.

And the next day, it was nudged up to 10.8 million gallons. And the media just captured that

number. Already, 10.8 million gallons was horrific. It was the biggest oil spill in our nation's

history. It was big enough for the media. Are you saying that the media simply ignored the high-end estimate or Exxon stopped repeating it?

Exxon never said it in a press conference.

Just when the media started to ask questions, where did that 10.8 million gallons come from?

Has it been independently verified? Frank Iyerossi,

the owner of Exxon Shipping at a press conference, said alcohol may be involved. And I kid you not,

I witnessed the entire international media just switched tracks. And that was how we got 10.8 million gallons,

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