Cover-up or self-censorship?

I've been searching for an hour to find images that used to be available of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It's not that there aren't some available, there are. But a great many sites were linking to a few sites that have changed over time. These sites, such as:

Alaska History

www.oilspill.state.ak.us/history/photos.htm
www.alaska.net/~ospic

Photo Documentary

are either beautified or gone. The result is that the online history of the event is increasingly identical with the oil industry assertion that all is well. I'm not making a claim about whether that's true or not. What bothers me is that there don't seem to be good sources for the *hundreds* of photos that used to be available online. Instead, the variety of shots is greatly diminished and some sites are dominated by photos that look like they could be PR photos favored by the Exxon media response team.

Public relations cover-up

I suppose that for people in the region there is personal experience to balance perceptions. But as a resident of New York, I rely on the Web as a form of historical resource. So it disturbs me to see, over the course of only a few years, that the histories of this event have strayed so far from the most powerful evidence -- to my mind: that of documentary photography.

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