On Monday, I posted a story complaining that, following federal authorities’ announcement that the oil slicks on surface waters were rapidly disappearing, the media failed to stress that the absence of evident oil is not necessarily evidence of absent oil. I just posted an important update to that column, which is worth pulling out into a new post:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Wednesday that about 74 percent of the spilled oil has been dealt with by capture, skimming, burning, evaporation, dissolution and dispersion. The remainder is onshore, still in the water, or buried at the bottom of the Gulf. In a front-page story published before the official announcement, The New York Times reported that the government was “expected” to say that the uncollected oil is “so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.”

Well, what the government actually said was, “Less oil on the surface does not mean that there isn’t oil still in the water column or that our beaches and marshes aren’t still at risk.” BBC News reported that, speaking Tuesday, the government’s oil-spill response coordinator, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, “welcomed reports the seal was working, but warned against ‘premature celebration,’ adding there was still much clear-up work to do.” The Times should take that warning to heart. After all, if 26 percent of the total oil spilled is still out there, that’s roughly 1,225,000 barrels (51,450,000 gallons) according to the latest estimate, or more than 4.5-times the amount the Exxon Valdez dumped in the Prince William Sound.

Again, the government said that the remaining quarter of leaked oil poses real risks, and while the Times’s article subtly acknowledges that, it’s not the dominant frame established in the lead and nutgraph.

The risks are further described in the full report (pdf) released by NOAA on Wednesday. “Chemical dispersants were applied at the surface and below the surface; therefore, the chemically dispersed oil ended up both deep in the water column and just below the surface. Dispersion increases the likelihood that the oil will be biodegraded, both in the water column and at the surface. Until it is biodegraded, naturally or chemically dispersed oil, even in dilute amounts, can be toxic to vulnerable species,” the report says. It adds:

Even though the threat to shorelines, fish and wildlife, and ecosystems has decreased since the capping of the BP wellhead, federal scientists remain extremely concerned about the impact of the spill to the Gulf ecosystem. Fully understanding the impacts of this spill on wildlife, habitats, and natural resources in the Gulf region will take time and continued monitoring and research.

The Times’s decision to jump the gun and report an apparent lack of risk before seeing the actual report was grossly irresponsible. [Correction, 6:00 p.m.: Earlier today, I got an e-mail from the environment editor at the Times, Erica Goode, who tells me that the Times did, in fact, have an advanced copy of Wednesday’s report before the paper went to press. So I, too, am guilty of jumping the gun here, and regret that error.

I asked Goode why, given the report in its possession, the Times had expected federal officials to say that the lingering oil doesn’t pose much additional risk of harm. Here is her response: “The lede of the story was not offering a direct quote from the report — it was summarizing what the whole report said and what its implications were (in that sense, announce may not have been the best word). Note that the piece included many caveats — including the fourth graf, which quotes Lubchenco saying that the government remains ‘concerned about the ecological damage that has already occurred and the potential for more.’

Curtis Brainard collaborated on this article. Eliott and Griffin are the directors of the Science Media Centres in Australia and New Zealand, respectively. Kelland is Reuters health and science correspondent for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.