FEMA accused of censorship Email this Story Sep 7, 4:27 PM (ET) By Deborah Zabarenko WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When U.S. officials asked the media not to take pictures of those killed by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, they were censoring a key part of the disaster story, free speech watchdogs said on Wednesday. The move by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is in line with the Bush administration's ban on images of flag-draped U.S. military coffins returning from the Iraq war, media monitors said in separate telephone interviews. "It's impossible for me to imagine how you report a story whose subject is death without allowing the public to see images of the subject of the story," said Larry Siems of the PEN American Center, an authors' group that defends free expression. U.S. newspapers, television outlets and Web sites have featured pictures of shrouded corpses and makeshift graves in New Orleans. But on Tuesday, FEMA refused to take reporters and photographers along on boats seeking victims in flooded areas, saying they would take up valuable space need in the recovery effort and asked them not to take pictures of the dead. In an e-mail explaining the decision, a FEMA spokeswoman wrote: "The recovery of victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect and we have requested that no photographs of the deceased by made by the media." Efforts to recover bodies continued on Wednesday. Out in the city's filthy waters, rescue teams tied bodies to trees or fences when they found them and noted the location for later recovery before carrying on in search of survivors. Rebecca Daugherty of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press found this stance inexplicable. "The notion that, when there's very little information from FEMA, that they would even spend the time to be concerned about whether the reporting effort is up to its standards of taste is simply mind-boggling," Daugherty said. "You cannot report on the disaster and give the public a realistic idea of how horrible it is if you don't see that there are bodies as well." 'INVITATION TO CHAOS' FEMA's policy of excluding media from recovery expeditions in New Orleans is "an invitation to chaos," according to Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a part of Columbia University's journalism school. "This is about managing images and not public taste or human dignity," Rosenstiel said. He said FEMA's refusal to take journalists along on recovery missions meant that media workers would go on their own. Rosenstiel also noted that U.S. media, especially U.S. television outlets, are generally reluctant to show corpses. "By and large, American television is the most sanitized television in the world," he said. "They are less likely to show bodies, they are less likely to show graphic images of the dead than any television in the world." There is also a question of what the American PEN Center's Siems called "international equity," noting that American news outlets cover stories around the world showing the effects of natural disasters and wars in graphic detail. "How is the world going to look at us if we go into their part of the world and we broadcast these images and we do not allow ourselves to look at such images when they're right in our own midst?" Siems said. Mark Tapscott, a former editor at the Washington Times newspaper who now deals with media issues at the Heritage Foundation, said the FEMA decision did not amount to censorship. "Let's not make a common decency issue into a censorship issue," Tapscott said. "Nobody wants to wake up in the morning and see their dead uncle on the front page. That's just common decency."
September 03, 2005 If he could go to Baghdad, why didn't Bush go to the New Orleans Superdome or the Convention Center? It was bizarre for all of the country and much of the world to be watching those scenes for days on our TVs and news reports, and for Bush's photo ops to be in areas that were far less critical. I know there are security considerations but his visit seemed extraordinarily hollow even by this administration's standard of ultra-stage managed events. Dutch viewer Frank Tiggelaar writes: There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV. ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time. The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF. http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002485.html
I think it is an outrage that FEMA does not view accommodating the press as its first priority. Doesn't that idiot Bush appointed to run FEMA know how important these journalists are to our way of life? How dare he put the interests of stranded survivors over their need to get some shocking pictures. It will be an important step in their recovery for refugees to see pictures of relatives bloated by drowning and halfeaten by gators.
Now NBC News Anchor Brian Williams writes about the efforts to block NBC's coverage: While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States. At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history. http://www.dailykos.com/
Times-Picayune Saturday, September 03, 2005 Bush visit halts food delivery By Michelle Krupa Staff writer Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bushâs visit to New Orleans, officials said. The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melanconâs chief of staff, Casey OâShea. âWe had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they wonât let helicopters fly,â OâShea said Friday afternoon. The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.
It is clear here that Bush told the Governor and Mayor to order the state National Guard troops to bar access to the media and point their rifles at them. The Governor at first didn't agree, stating she would need another 24 hours to consider Bush's words. As for the Mayor, he thought the Governor had already approved it.
Cenk Uygur Bio Blog Index RSS 09.08.2005 Four Years After 9/11 -- We Still Have No Results What has the Bush Administration been doing these last four years? If they werenât busy preparing for a national emergency or busy catching Osama bin Laden â the perpetrator of the last great catastrophe in America â what on Godâs green earth have they been up to? This is incompetence that borders on indifference. Do they not care about peopleâs lives? How can you have a Department of Homeland Security that hasnât prepared to defend the homeland? What if it was a terrorist who blew up the levees of New Orleans instead of a hurricane? Would the response have been any different? If the answer is yes, then why? Why should it make any difference to the people whose lives were on the line what caused the levees to break? They should get help either way. If the answer is âno, the response would have been the same,â then four years after 9/11, we are not even remotely prepared for a terrorist strike inside the United States. What was FEMA doing all this time, preparing for an emergency that might hit Honduras or Iceland? New Orleans was the most vulnerable city in America for a natural disaster. Every expert in the field knew it. FEMA is not an association of dentists. Federal emergencies are their forte. It is one thing for a grocery store clerk or an accountant to say they couldnât foresee a hurricane causing this big a problem in New Orleans, itâs another for FEMA to say the same thing. This is what we pay them for. Their claims of ignorance are pathetic and inexcusable. Another excuse the Department of Homeland Security and the Bush administration were making is that they were having trouble responding because of the scale of this emergency. Well, weâll just have to tell natural disasters or terrorists to keep their planned destruction to a minimum next time, so that the lightweights at DHS can handle it. Or perhaps we can petition Mother Nature to pull her punches. Itâs just not fair how tough she is on us. Weâre just not ready for her big wallops. Next time, letâs just order heavy rain showers and see if FEMA can handle that. Besides, I thought President Bush was supposed to have some pull with the Big Guy upstairs. Couldnât he have put in a good word for New Orleans? I know the president has his hands full with his bike rides and naps and vacations, but does he oversee anything? Does he ever ask anyone working underneath him to be accountable? Does he have any idea what theyâre doing and whether theyâre doing it right? Does anyone have confidence that President Bush knows what FEMAâs plan of action is supposed to be in cases of emergency? Does anyone think President Bush knows the Pentagonâs plans for heeling the rift between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq? How about just knowing what the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite is? Youâre all shaking your heads right now because whether youâre a Democrat or Republican, you know he doesnât know any of these things. And that would be fine if he was a plumber or a professional brush-clearer. But heâs not â he is the President of the United States of America. Has there ever been a man so overmatched for the job? Is it normal to expect so little from the man who is The Leader of the Free World? Hurricane Katrina touched down on land and the New Orleans levees were breached on Monday morning. On Tuesday, our fearless leader was still on vacation and still playing the fiddle ⦠Iâm sorry, the guitar. People were still not being rescued on Friday. The mayor put out a âdesperate S.O.S.â because he could not get help from the federal government. There was anarchy in the streets. We had lost another city to looters, death, mayhem and chaos. But this time it wasnât Fallujah or Ramadi â it was New Orleans. How bad at the job do you have to be before you get relieved of your command? How about â so bad that you still canât bring to justice the people who committed the greatest crime in American history after four long years? Our priorities are all wrong. We got Saddam Hussein who didnât attack us, but we didnât get Osama bin Laden who did. We got to Baghdad quicker than we got to New Orleans. If the President cares to do something, he does it (usually with devastating incompetence, but he does it). If it doesnât capture his attention, heâd rather go on a bike ride. So, thereâs nothing left to conclude but that the people of New Orleans are just not that interesting to the President. And the victims of 9/11? He canât be bothered to catch the man who ordered their cruel deaths, heâs got guitars to play and brush to clear. Send to a friend Post a Comment Read all posts by Cenk Uygur
Katrina Hatches New Breed of Chickenhawk "How can these people sleep at night and how can they choke down their food knowing it is purchased off of the flesh and blood of others?" Cindy Sheehan, War Mom As the floodwaters slowly recede to reveal a thick layer of dead democrat voters, a new breed of chickenhawk has risen from the toxic muck, demanding our children be sent into harm's way without ever having served themselves. This time, the cowardly warmongers are not the bloviating Nazi propagandists of right-wing hate radio, but outstanding members of the progressive community. Brothers, sisters, and sexually ambiguous political comrades they may be, they have nonetheless taken it upon themselves to volunteer our young tots for hazard duty in the devasted gulf region. Our beloved Maureen Dowd, for instance, thinks the 82nd Airborne should have parachuted into New Orleans through the eye of the hurricane, yet she sat out the entire Vietnam War with a convenient case of chlamydia. The profoundly flatulent Oliver Willis spent Desert Storm shovelling pastries into his porcine cakehole, but he has no problem sending someone else's kid to wade chest deep through raw sewage. Even the saucy Arianna Huffington has joined the neo-chickenhawk brigade, insisting that Bush should have pulled the troops out of Iraq and sent them to Louisiana - a state that poses no imminent threat, and where they'd be welcomed with "flowers in the streets". But I doubt we'll see ol' Zsa Zsa chasing armed looters down Bourbon Street any time soon. She's got a blog to run! Don't get me wrong. I love these progressive icons as much as abortion itself. Perhaps this sudden spurt of fascism is just a temporary case of insanity, like when the entire political left became flag-waving jingoists for about 10 minutes after 9/11. Michael Moore helped us get through our patriotic dementia, and were back to sneering at the Stars & Stripes before Bush could finish milking his Pet Goat. I only hope liberal intellectuals like Arianna, Oliver, and MoDo quickly regain their senses, lest people start to think they're all a bunch of blubbering hypocrites. BlameBush