Oil Spill Pictures, the Coast Guard, and the First Amendment. A New Excuse for the 65-foot “Safety Zone.”
The government has changed its excuse for the 65-foot “safety zone” announced by the Coast Guard this week. The new excuse? Vandalism. Yes, you read it correctly. Vandalism. It seems strange that Admiral Thad Allen didn’t mention vandalism when he announced the “safety zone.” But the Coast Guard changed its story after an outcry from the media and the public accusing the Coast Guard of trying to prevent oil spill pictures and accurate reporting on the oil spill clean up. People who venture inside the “safety zone” are subject to a $40,000 fine and a Class D felony conviction.
Click here to see oil spill pictures.
Here’s what Coast Guard Admiral Allen originally said when the ban was announced, according to NOLA.com:
Allen said BP had not brought up the issue, but that he had received some complaints from county commissioners in Florida and other local elected officials who “thought that there was a chance that somebody would get hurt or they would have a problem with the boom itself.”
In its article reporting the Coast Guard ban, NOLA.com reported that members of the media had experienced similar problems trying to cover the oil spill from the air:
Photographer Ted Jackson of The Times-Picayune was trying to charter a flight with Southern Seaplane in late May to photograph oil coming ashore on Grand Isle, but the pilot was told that no media flights could go below 3,000 feet, due to restrictions from the Federal Aviation Administration.
We’ve published two posts suggesting that the Coast Guard banned the public from coming within 65 feet of oil boom in order to prevent photographers from taking pictures of animals injured by the oil spill and other things BP doesn’t want us to see, such as covering up oil on Grande Isle, Louisiana by dumping sand on top of it. Similar allegations were made by Yobie Benjamin, an exceptional blogger for the San Francisco Chronicle.
In a comment to Benjamin’s post, Coast Guard Petty Officer Rachel Polish wrote:
I am serving at the Unified Command as part of the Deepwater Horizon Response effort.
A few weeks ago, we announced that boom vandalism was becoming a significant issue in our on-water effectiveness http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/671091/.
The response we received from the general public was positive, with many sharing our PSA on social networks.
Unfortunately, vandalism of boom has not stopped. Action was required to ensure our operations achieve maximum effectiveness. As a result, the Coast Guard introduced a safety zone around boom to prevent vandalism and to protect the members and equipment of the response effort by limiting access to, and through, deployed protective boom.
Here is the URL to the release that announced the safety zone: http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/726955/.
I want to be clear – media has NEVER been denied access.
Unfortunately, Petty Officer Polish’s statement that the “media has NEVER been denied access” is flatly contradicted by numerous published reports by credible media, including NOLA.com’s “Limits on access to oiled waters, coast frustrates journalists“, Newsweek’s “BP’s Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill,” and numerous sources cited in our post “Oil Spill Pictures | BP Coverup | First Amendment.” Reporters have complained that the new 65-foot restriction will keep people in boats much more than 65 feet away from beaches due to the fact that oil boom is deployed offshore, and boats are not allowed to venture within 65 feet of the boom. If the boom is 50 feet offshore, reporters in boats must stay 115 feet away from shore.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper Talks About the Coast Guard Media Restrictions.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpJBsjKhRTo
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BP is such a joke… they should all be arrested along with the US govt. How long ago did they cap the leak? And how many legitimate claims are still “pending” from damages they suffered back in the beginning of the summer? I happen to know three people that were affected directly by BP’s shady PR tactics and manipulation of our laws, one of whom was a journalist who was almost arrested and charged with felonies for taking pictures of oil covered animals near the coast. Not only is it bad enough that thousands of fishers’ lively hoods are ruined for god knows how many years to come, they were paid a pathetic amount of money to clean up BP’s own mess. To add even more insult to injury, BP used Corexit 9527, which contains mainly 2-butoxyethanol, which is very toxic. You wouldn’t have to be a scientist to know that, since in the first week of using it over 70 fisherman ended up at the hospital. Of course if you even inquired about this, I’m sure the govt (which is pretty much owned by oil companies) would deal with you quite quickly, let alone taking pictures of it in an attempt to run a story on it. If you didn’t know already, the govt is doing what they do best… crapping on the 1st amendment: naturalnews.com/029130_Gulf_of_Mexico_censorship.html. My friend who almost got arrested on felony charges simply went out on a boat into about 30 feet of water and used a water proof cam to photograph one of the many oil plumes forming at the bottom of the surface (which BP vehemently denies). Now here comes the hilarious part. He switched the film in his camera with a blank one in the event they were stopped by police, which they were as soon as they got back to shore. They let him go but still took his name down, and what do you know… later that night, 2 guys wearing black hoodies attempted to break into his house. He caught pics of them on his home security system (he saved the pics… wireless adt camera break in photos). Hmm, I wonder who paid these guys to break in and what they were after? Definitely not BP or our govt, that’s for sure!
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