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NEW ORLEANS: FEMA Bans Photos in Recovery Areas
September 09, 2005
Before he reassigned, FEMA director Michael Brown, prevented media representatives from filming and distributing photos of those who were killed in the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
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"The recovery of the victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect,” a FEMA spokeswoman told reporters earlier this week when photographers were denied spaces on some of the rescue boats going into the hurricane damaged areas. “We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media.”
Sadly and ominously, his restriction mimics the media blackout that has been enforced on flag draped coffins reentering the United States from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Elected officials, reporters and the victims themselves have been demanding information about the catastrophe and relief efforts, without much success. On recent morning news shows, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), repeatedly made the point that “the buck stops at the federal government.” She insisted, “I’m not interested in pointing fingers; I’m interesting in getting answers.”
The required level of aid and assistance will not be met if the general public is not aware of the devastating effects of the hurricane. According to Rebecca Daugherty of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, “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. 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.”
Stephen Rohde, a First Amendment lawyer and Chair of PEN USA’s Domestic Freedom to Write Committee, said that “time and again governments try to conceal their mistakes and hide the consequences of their failures by appeals to “decency,” “dignity” or other high-sounding excuses. The American people and the rest of the world need to see firsthand the deadly results flowing from this disaster. Under the First Amendment, the government has no place dictating what photographs are taken, broadcast and published concerning one of the greatest natural (and man-made) disaster in American history.”
PEN USA urges the new coordinator to allow the media to accurately tell the story of Hurricane Katrina and her victims, all of her victims. Please write to:
Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen
Eighth Coast Guard District
Hale Boggs Federal Building
501 Magazine St. Room
New Orleans, LA 70130-3396
Federal Emergency Management Agency,
500 C Street S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20472
SAMPLE LETTER OF APPEAL
Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen
Eighth Coast Guard District
Hale Boggs Federal Building
501 Magazine St. Room
New Orleans, LA 70130-3396
Dear Vice Admiral Allen:
I am writing on behalf of PEN USA, part of an international organization with an 84-year history of defending freedom of expression through the written word.
It has come to our attention that reporters are being discouraged from taking and distributing photos of Hurricane Katrina’s victims. In some cases photographers have been denied space in rescue boats going out into the most devastated areas. This practice should be ended immediately.
Everyone able to help or send aid needs to know just how much they are needed. How can FEMA and all of the evacuees receive the assistance they so desperately need unless the world sees with its own eyes the deadly consequences of this disaster.
The press has a duty to cover this horrendous catastrophe, the good, the bad and the deadly.
PEN USA strongly requests that photographers and reporters be able to accurately report the devastation left in the wake of Katrina. The more people know, the more they will help.
Sincerely,