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Ban On Photographing Near Gulf Oil Booms
boombaard writes "The day before yesterday CNN's Anderson Cooper reported that, from now on, there is a new rule in effect, which de facto bars photographers from coming within 65 feet of any deployed boom or response vessel around Deepwater Horizon (official announcement). The rule, announced by the US Coast Guard, forbids 'photographers and reporters and anyone else from coming within 65 feet of any response vessel or booms out on the water or on beaches. In order to get closer, you have to get direct permission from the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans,' while 'violators could face a fine of $40,000 and Class D felony charges. What's even more extraordinary is that the Coast Guard tried to make the exclusion zone 300 feet, before scaling it back to 65 feet.'" Read below for the Coast Guard's statement on the new rule.
"The Coast Guard Captain of the Port of New Orleans has delegated authority to the Coast Guard Incident Commander in Houma to allow access to the safety zones placed around all Deepwater Horizon booming operations in Southeast Louisiana. The Coast Guard Incident Commander will ensure the safety of the members and equipment of the response before access is granted. The safety zone has been put in place to prevent vandalism to boom and to protect the members and equipment of the response effort by limiting access to, and through, deployed protective boom."
This would be a great time to start updating those satellite photos of the gulf
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Greetings and Salutations.
Well, the questions and thoughts that spring to my mind are: Have there been any problems with photographers damaging the booms or causing breaches? While 65 feet may not seem like much, it can easily make it very hard to get clear pictures of the booms as they bob up and down in the ocean waters. THAT makes it harder to keep track of how well they are working to block the oil, or, adsorb the crude and keep it from moving on. Is this the REAL reason for the limit? Also, why would the limit be 300 feet first...then get cut down to 65 feet? That sounds more like spin control than security to me.
Regards
dave mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
Yes, clearly we should ban press from all areas that Jethro finds boring.
What gives the press the right to interfere with operational security? They can't take pictures from 65' out? Is this actually incisive reporting or cheap voyeurism? If they made a documentary about how badly they are being oppressed, would you pay to go see it?
The flight restrictions strike me as similar to the main article's complaints - they can be construed as impeding freedom of the press, but really are for safety of the responders and planes. If a boat wake poses a threat, so would the the airstream of a low flying plane. For further restrictions, the simple observation that air traffic at moderately low altitude is probably much higher/less linear than normal means that controlling more aircraft interferes with the cleanup effort. I have no qualms with prioritizing the cleanup traffic by redirecting those without a strict need to be there away. For an analogy, I'd go with keeping the press back 100 feet from a burning building so that emergency vehicles have easier access and they do not get in the way of rescue efforts.
Well, while I don't disagree, I think the popular usage of "news" has long since ceased to mean "objective discovery and reporting of facts and implications of those facts". Instead, "news" has become segmented by demographic. You have news for the liberal, news for the conservative, news for the dumb, news for the elitist, news for the nerds.... I pine for a day when it was considered embarrassing for a news organization to not be making a serious and overt attempt at objectivity (and yes, of course it was never truly objective...but I think the ideal actually mattered). At any rate, by today's standards, the Daily Kos is a "news outlet" just as is Red State, MSNBC, Fox News, and all the others....
I seriously have to question if you know what a felony is. A felon can lose their 2nd amendment rights, the right to vote or serve on a jury, be banned from working as a lawyer, teacher or a career in the military and with the 3 strike laws can face life in prison.
I have no problem with a 65' boundary, nothing a 300mm lens can't handle. But this should be no more then a misdemeanor.
65 feet is not a very large distance. At all. It's less than half the usual 'safe recommended following distance' for highway traffic.
Moving things around on the sea is difficult, and they've already once had a worry about a gas buildup blowing out and had to quickly move a ship (which yanked a pipe etc etc). Having a small buffer zone to allow things to move around in an emergency is only sensible, and any journalist who thinks endangering other people so they can sit on top of the story can just blow it out their ass.
This story is just sensationalism feeding off public displeasure with anyone involved with this mess.. which is disappointing. While there are people who deserve to be hated for what has happened, if you're just automatically going to shit on ANYONE involved with trying to fix the problem, why the hell would anyone want to get involved with that? blaaaah.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Stop with the felony for being too close crap, get that out of your brain for a moment.
It is a felony for willfully endangering the safety/lives of others.
yep, and actions that "could" result in such a result should be prosectuted with that end possibility in mind, ie not a damn misdemeanor. if you endanger the lives of others you should not expect a right to keep your 2nd amendment rights.
There are a lot of actions that "could" result in people getting killed, like running a red light with your car. Looking up some state laws at findlaw.com, it seems that most states regard this as misdemeanor.
Violating the 65 ft. safety zone is arguably less dangerous by itself, and should be a misdemeanor at worst.
C - the footgun of programming languages
A reporter is supposed to be present and APART from the event. As a matter of ethics, a reporter should NEVER become part of the story.
There's absolutely no reason why any responsible reporter would claim to have the right to do anything that can interfere with the events of the story. That's what can happen here if they get too close. The ships deploying the oil booms are fairly large vessels -- at least compared to some of the dingies that and dorries that the reporters are rowing into the area on. So, of course, there is a a safety issue involved here. Instead of deploying the boom quickly and efficiently, the crew has to take it slower and pay greater attention to smaller lookie-loo vessels that come right up on them, so they don't accidentally ram or run them over. Since time is a major factor here in deploying that boom, having these morons getting in the way is a bit of a problem. Both for the deploying ships (who have to take it slower, and be a bit more careful of these vessels) and for the reporter, who is now interfering with the story (which is ethically, a bad thing for reporters).
FYI, a reporter can't wander up to a firescene and pester the firefighters as they're hosing down the building either, and yes, that is illegal.
Several hundred if not thousand feet of boom has been STOLEN by 'photographers'. Some have even tried to sell the stolen boom back to BP. So yeah, while photographs are great and all, and I really can't wait to see them on CNN, because, you know, they add just that much more realism to something that I already realize is totally fucked, I guess I understand this ruling. Spin control or not, dave, it's for good reason.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Uhhhh - I really don't see a problem. No photographers within 65 feet. Let's think a moment. You want a shot of a boat or a boom, that is, what, 50 feet long? Since any professional photographer has zoom lenses (whether optical or digital zoom, it hardly matters) he can be anywhere within 1/2 mile to get spectacular shots. I can show you a great shot of the ship I served on, shot from ~ 5 miles out - you can see that both the mount 52 deck gun and the missile launcher is tracking the helicopter that took the shot. (It was in a war zone, we tracked EVERYTHING, didn't matter if it claimed to be friendly)
The coast guard doesn't want any one climbing on the booms, or sabotaging them, they don't want to be rescuing some fool who hurts himself. Stay 65 feet away, take all the pics you want. Seems reasonable to me. The original 300 feet wasn't unreasonable, either. 300 feet is terribly close to any working vessel at sea. The rules of the road, observed around the world, dictate that you stay clear of working vessels and/or ships underway.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Wonder how long it will take for the geniuses in the field to figure out that if you create a barrier out of booms, along the width of the beach, you've now effectively blocked off the entire area.
You could effectively totally block several miles of beach by the simple placement of a few 100 feet of boom on either end. No different than a police barrier or crime scene tape. "Do not pass".
Except that's not what they're selling us here, supposedly. 65 feet my ass.
Yeah for a second I thought I was supposed to be upset because they're letting people get so close. Sixty five feet can be annoyingly close to a work site at sea.
From the actual release:
FTFA at NewsBusters.org:
This is not about reporters and photographers. This about preventing accidents. It sounds to me like Cooper and company are pissed that they are not getting special treatment and are required seek permission and access like everyone else.
I notice that there was no mention of CNN or any other news organization applying for access to an area, let alone being denied access. Did they bother to apply, or did they just start whining that they had to follow some rules to help ensure the safety and security of everyone involved?
Sounds to me like Cooper et al. are whining because some safety rules have been set up that inconvenience them instead of inconveniencing or endangering those who are actually doing the clean up and the equipment being used.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
You know, "news" never actually meant that. That's just a marketing angle television news came up with in order to appeal to the broadest market; actual journalists have rarely if ever been objective.
Well you did fall for the spin on the story as had I until I thought about a bit and read some of the other comments on Slashdot.
This is not a restriction on photographers it is just a restriction. All none workers are to keep at least 65 feet from all booms and working ships.
Think about how close that really is before you get all bent. It is to keep protesters, gawkers, and general idiots as well the press from bumping up to or getting run over by out at sea.
Frankly 300 feet which is really close to get to a boat at sea seems reasonable and common sense. This smaller distance is probably to help the press with coverage and not to stop it.
In other words this is yet another none story that has been spun into a Freedom of the Press issue when their is no freedom of the Press Issue involved.
It is funny because since I do not like the Obama administration because of it's space policy and some other issues I was all ready to jump in on them cracking down on the press. That really would have been unfair of me because frankly this is a reasonable restriction based on safety. Frankly they probably should have gone with the 300 ft rule but seems to have gone for less safety and more access.
And they can request closer access. Now we do have to watch and see if the that is used to block access but that has not as far as I can tell happened yet.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Because with the press if you make it just a fine they will just pay it and keep coming. You can not make press respect anything other than themselves.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I believe that their is also a limit to how much a fine can be with a misdemeanor. Before I get jumped on I freely admit that I could be wrong about that.
Also maybe you missed that part where it said, "could be charged with". It is meant to scare people into not being stupid. Let me know if anybody gets charged with it. This is the worst case and honestly will probably never be used unless someone is really causing problems and refuses to comply with requests to move.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I couldn't agree more.. 65 feet seems really close, probably a bit on the unsafe side, and closer than needed for photography of the spill.
And let's face it, if you can't get a fantastic shot of something large (i.e.: a giant oil spill, not a flea) from 100 feet away, you're either badly equipped or lacking in talent. Getting closer will not help you much.
Of course, we're quick to assume this is impinging on freedom of the press, but the last thing we need is some idiot reporter getting his boat hung up in the boom and damaging it because he was 5' away and a big wave pushed his boat into it.
-Matt