Not to worry. Reporters are being barred from the area. We will no
longer see the non-survivors in the same way we don't see the caskets
of the suddenly discharged from Iraq. And people who track the body
count will be called traitors.
1) 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."
2) And Brian Williams, NBC reports
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.
Winsor
Long Beach, California, USA
On Sep 8, 2005, at 11:09 AM, Walt Wayman wrote:
> CNN is referring to the floaters in New Orleans as "non-
> survivors." Give me a f**king break! They're corpses, fatalities,
> dead people -- take your pick! What's next? Maybe we can call
> them immobile water sports enthusiasts, or how about just
> terminally uninterested in current events. Jeez!
>
> Walt
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