(NOTE: This blog posts appears both here, and on my other blog, “Journalism, Because It Matters.”)
A week ago today, the U.S. Coast Guard put into place new regulations designed to keep the public from coming within 65 feet of any response vessels or booms on the water or on beaches. And when you read ‘public,’ know that also means reporters and news photographers covering the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
For the general public such guidelines may not seem like much of a big deal. Sixty-five feet? Oh that’s not far. No big deal. You journalists can still do your job.
Wrong. It is a big deal. And no, at 65 feet journalists cannot do the job the general public expects and demands.
As it stands, most booms are rigged at least 40 feet outside whatever they are trying to protect. Under the new guidelines, which the USCG calls a “safety zone,” anyone penetrating the perimeter could be fined up to $40,000 and have a Class D felony on their record. That’s a pretty stiff penalty for a journalist just trying to do his or her job.
A press release from Unified Command attempts to justify the action with this statement: “The safety zone has been put in place to protect members of the response effort, the installation and maintenance of oil containment boom, the operation of response equipment and protection of the environment by limiting access to and through deployed protective boom.”
If any of those processes had been impeded by the public or media, there would be less outcry over these rules. But no members of the response effort have been put in danger by the public or media. Neither the public nor media have interfered with the installation or maintenance of any boom. To the contrary, members of the general public have asked to assist in boom deployment.
The restrictions place photojournalists at a particular disadvantage as they continue to try to visually tell the story of the oil gusher’s harm. Imagine trying to photograph an oiled bird from 105 feet away, the absolute closest a shooter could get under ideal conditions. A photo with any impact will not be taken from that distance.
Imagine trying to tell the story of what a shoreline or marsh grass line looks like from 105 feet away. You can’t, because you can’t see the extent of the damage.
The government is limiting the public’s access to the most-impacted areas. More importantly — and more frightening — is the fact that the restrictions severely limit the media’s ability to tell this story that will continue for weeks, months and years ahead.
All of this plays out under the guise of safety. At one press conference, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the oil spill, said the rules were also for the protections of the public and the media.
What Adm. Allen fails to realize is that most journalists accept a certain amount of risks in their jobs. We cover incidents and situations far more dangerous than an oil-soaked marsh every day. Fires, armed standoffs and hurricanes all have an exponentially higher degree of danger than anything associated with this crisis since the explosion that started it all.
While most local governments will fall in lockstep — mostly just to avoid confrontation or to maintain good relations — with the USCG on this issue, Plaquemines (La.) Parish President Billy Nungesser is not one to suck up to anyone, nor mince any words.
Nungesser is quoted on nola.com as telling a group of journalists, “I think somebody came up with a good reason of how to justify keeping the press away. But guess what? That isn’t gonna keep us away. Anytime you all want, you all can come in there wherever we go, on our boats.”
He believes it remains important that the media have reasonably unrestrained clearance to continue to tell this important story.
I and countless others fail to understand these new regulations. Instead of helping anything, they severely hinder the media’s ability to do its job and keep the public informed.
This is not pretty work for journalists. They’re covering a catastrophe already taking its toll on countless thousands of people, including the reporters and photographers themselves.
But it’s their job. And for some odd, sometimes inexplicable reason, they love what they do. They excel, when they are allowed to do so, in the toughest of circumstances.
Remove the restrictions, Adm. Allen. You have that power. Allow all of the story of this disaster to be told. As CNN’s Anderson Cooper reminds you and BP every night, the media is not the enemy. I will add, “unless you make it so. It’s your decision.”
