Now a Felony for reporters to get within 65 feet of oil boom!

[angus_cow_doctor]

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0704/coa...cleanup-sites/

Coast Guard bans reporters from oil cleanup sites

By Daniel Tencer
Sunday, July 4th, 2010 -- 1:31 pm


Anderson Cooper: 'We are not the enemy here'
Journalists who come too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission could find themselves facing a $40,000 fine and even one to five years in prison under a new rule instituted by the Coast Guard late last week.
It's a move that outraged observers have decried as an attack on First Amendment rights. And CNN's Anderson Cooper describes the new rules as making it "very easy to hide incompetence or failure."
The Coast Guard order states that "vessels must not come within 20 meters [65 feet] of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law."
But since "oil spill response operations" apparently covers much of the clean-up effort on the beaches, CNN's Anderson Cooper describes the rule as banning reporters from "anywhere we need to be."

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A "willful" violation of the new rule could result in Class D felony charges, which carry a penalty of one to five years in prison under federal law.
The new rule appears to contradict the promises made by Adm. Thad Allen, the official leading the Coast Guard's response to the oil spill.
"Media will have uninhibited access anywhere we're doing operations, except for two things, if it's a security or safety problem," Allen told ABC News in June.
In defending the new rule, Allen told reporters that he got "complaints from local officials" about the safety of people near cleanup efforts.
"We're not the enemy here," Cooper responded in a report broadcast Thursday night. "Those of us down here trying to accurately show what is happening -- we are not the enemy. I've not heard about any journalist who's disrupted relief efforts; no journalist wants to be seen as having slowed down the cleanup or made things worse. If a Coast Guard official asked me to move, I'd move. But to create a blanket rule that everyone has to stay 65 feet away from boom and boats, that doesn't sound like transparency."
The rule has come under severe criticism not only from journalists but from observers and activists involved in the Gulf Coast clean-up.
"With this, the Gulf Coast cleanup operation has now entered a weird Orwellian reality where the news is shaped, censored and controlled by the government in order to prevent the public from learning the truth about what's really happening," writes Mike Adams at NaturalNews.
"We might expect something like this from Chavez, or Castro or even the communist leaders of China, but here in the United States, we've all been promised we lived in 'the land of the free,'" Adams continues. "Obama apparently does not subscribe to that philosophy anymore (if he ever did)."
Under the rule, reporters or anyone else wishing to get within 65 feet of a cleanup operation need to get permission from the Coast Guard Captain of the Port of New Orleans.
"The fact is we're not attempting to keep anyone from seeing anything," Edward Stanton, the current Coast Guard Captain in New Orleans, told WKRG News in Mobile.
"Nine times out of 10, probably 10 times out of 10” access will be granted, Stanton said.
He said the rule was put into place because of complaints about "boaters interfering with the oil spill operations."
Yet the rule seems on its face to be just the latest attempt to reduce media coverage of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which has now attained the status of worst accidental oil spill in history.
Reporters have been complaining for weeks about BP, the Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard working to keep reporters away from wrenching images of oil-covered birds and oil-soaked beaches. On Friday, a photographer from ProPublica was detained by police and BP officials after taking photos of a BP refinery in Texas City, Texas.
Cooper compared the latest effort to prevent access to the oil spill to similar efforts during Hurricane Katrina.
"Frankly it's a lot like in Katrina, where they tried to make it impossible to see recovery efforts of people who died in their homes. If we can't show what is happening, warts and all ... that makes it very easy to hide failure, and hide incompetence."

[Ultralite]

sorry there mike but, i can't stand redundancy...

i know in today's world of technology, information comes easily and reporting should be protected...

i, for one, don't need to see how we blew up a towel head or read how we water boarded some sand n!!!ger...nothing like laying out a battle plan for the enemy...and believe me, they watch the news too...

as far as this tidbit of information goes, get the hell out of the way of these workers and let them get thier jobs done...please see the other thread on the other site...

http://www.pensacolafishingforum.com...spended-71387/

i need to know some things and others, i don't feel the need to...like "how can i harrass this oil clean up worker?" and ask him dumbass questions...it's all about sensationalism...wait until another storm aproaches and turn on the weather channel...i hate that...

[angus_cow_doctor]

Mike, I did not post my view on this, only the article.

While I feel that the cleanup crews should not be in any way hindered by media, I am also concerned about the lack of transparency in the whole operation.

The first step in any take over of a society is always to control information/media.

We need to protect our right to freedom of speech and press. It is more important in the long run, I would say.

[Ultralite]

agreed...i just took it as sensationalism...a lot of the media you see is redundant (obviously)...i get the core of what you're saying but, i don't see our rights being threatened...perhaps they are but, there'll be an uprising from hell if people get too complacent and let these things slip by...

i believe in the constitution and if the law makers start f'kn with it, there'll be an uprising...and i'll be one of the first to raise some hell...and not on the inet but, in DC ready to start some sh!!!t...

[billyk]

65 feet hardly seems all that restrictive. With camera lenses and microphones what they are today, it would seem that any remotely competent photographer / journalist should be able to capture whatever images or sounds that they want to from well beyond that range.

I get to spend a lot of time out on the beach with the workers as part of my job with EMS, and while some workers do fear for their jobs if they talk to the media, most of them just want to be left alone to do their jobs, without being bombarded by questions from reporters all day long.

[RumDrum]

I'm of the opinion that the workers don't get told crap to begin with, the ones that might know something aren't going to risk their jobs in this economy to help some reporter spin it. Would you, honestly answer some of the questions asked, would you take a shot at them if you truly didn't know? Is the news company going to sign your check after you give them a few minutes?

The workers are there to work and help clean up our beaches. Whether we feel they're doing it right or wrong...they're here to help us and our area. Want to harass someone, want a news breaking interview...want to make headlines...go interview a suit from Transocean, BP, Haliburton and publish that. Good luck..

65 feet? Sounds more like a safety issue and precautionary zone more than anything. There has been boom disconnected, moved and even in some cases missing, though it certainly doesn't make headlines like the workers who won't talk....If you can't get a shot of the action from 65 feet, tell your network to buy you a better damn lens and mic.

Just my .02

I was actually watching AC360 when he aired this "new" change. I shook my head and said to the wife "He just isn't getting the other side of it here."