Censorship? What censorship???

[onerifle]

FEMA Blocks Photos of New Orleans Dead

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001055768


FEMA Blocks Photos of New Orleans Dead

By E&P Staff

Published: September 07, 2005 12:06 PM ET


NEW YORK- Forced to defend what some critics consider its slow and botched response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take photographs of the dead as they are recovered from New Orleans.

FEMA, which is leading the rescue efforts, rejected requests from journalists to accompany rescue boats as they went out to search for storm victims, Reuters reported Tuesday.

A FEMA spokeswoman told the wire service that space was need on the rescue boats and assured Reuters that "the recovery of the victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect."

"We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media," the spokeswoman told Reuters via e-mail.

The Bush administration's decision to prevent the news media from photographing flag-draped coffins of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq has fueled criticism that the government is trying to avoid images that put the war in a bad light.

 

[ID_shooting]

I have to agree w/ FEMA. There is no way in HECK I want some sleasy media creep near me or my family when we are taking care of our lost ones. the matter is private and certainly does not need to be perverted into some politicians warped agenda.

 

[3 gun]

Sounds right to me. I wouldn't want to find out a loved one didn't make it by seeing their picture in the paper. We all know there has been a terrible loss in NO, we really don't need more pictures.

 

[BrokenPaw]

How dare they tell the media that space on the rescue boats is needed for, gosh, the people they're rescuing! If I were a stranded victim in New Orleans, I'd be very upset if I had to take the last position on an almost-full boat. I'd much rather stay stranded and have a photographer on the boat there to document the event for posterity.

There's a difference between requesting that photos not be published (which is acceptable) and taking cameras away or otherwise preventing photos from being published (which is not).

The media, in their ivory-tower omphaloskepsis, have decided that the following is true:
The government not helping them = The goverment hindering them.

It's not the rescuer's job to haul some photographer and his 50 pounds of kit around, and the media should figure that out.

-BP

 

[onerifle]

I suspect that FEMA's "request" has more to do with political fallout than compassion...

 

[BrokenPaw]

I suspect that FEMA's "request" has more to do with political fallout than compassion...

It may very well. But it's still not censorship. This is not a first-amendment issue. It's a "wankers-with-press-cards arguing with wankers-with-GS-ratings" issue.

-BP

 

[Greg L]

I disagree, things are way too sanitized as is. It is easy enough to pick out a picture for publication that would show no identifying features.

After about 9/13/01 there were few pictures being circulated about the trapped people on top of the towers who made the decision to jump. If you didn't know better (just arrived on the planet from another world) you would have thought that it was a matter of "Oh, a building fell down. Let's sweep up the rubble & get back to work" (very generalized but I hope that you get the point). The human suffering is not something that someone should want to see, but it would probably do the blissninny soccer mom types some good to see that the world isn't just made of cotton candy.

I also fear that without some media oversight that the people killed by obvious nonstorm related methods (gunshot/knife wounds) will be marked down as "drowned" to try to reduce the evidence of just how bad things were right after it all was over.

 

[cuchulainn]

This isn't censorship. The feds didn't owe the journalists space on the boats.

There are plenty of bodies floating around. The photographers can get their own boats and clickety-click to their heart's content.

Calling this "censorship" is like saying goverment refusal to give us guns is "gun control."

 

[onerifle]

I have no problem with FEMA denying journalists room onboard boats commited to S&R. I'm inclined to agree with Greg L about media being too sanitized.

We keep talking about 'sheep'. Maybe the true scope of this sad situation (on numerous fronts) will awaken a few dormant minds.

Then again, maybe I'm hoping for too much...

 

[WT]

We need pictures of the Dead.

During World War II it took a Presidential order to allow pictures of dead American infantrymen to be shown.

Americans need to see what is happening in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

 

[auschip]

Why do we need pictures of dead people? I'm honestly curious what that will do for anyone.

 

[Lennyjoe]

They do nothing for me. They invade the privacy of the family who lost their loved ones. If one of my children or family members ended up on the front page of the newspaper I would be rather upset.

You want to see dead people, visit a morgue.

 

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Why don't they just get their own boats? The big media companies can afford comm satalites, helicopters, and plane tickets around the world for their crews. Yet they can't get their hands on a humble old rowboat?

 

[Art Eatman]

Think of how wonderful somebody would feel to learn via some TV video that one of their relatives had died--and the voiceover said he/she had been partially eaten by the family pet.

As was said above, let the newsies go to the morgue.

Some things I might have the "right" to know as a picture on the Telly, but I don't see any immediate need to know. There are enough heart attacks and car wrecks for an individual to learn more than is wanted about death.

Art

 

[Waitone]

I can believe the case for not showing the dead for every reason listed ^.

I can also believe the other case and that is to remind the good citizens of NO that their lives depends upon the slimy, low-life, inept, crooked, low-browed life form politician they elect. IMNSHO NO's mayor is responsible for the deaths of a lot of people. Corpses in the news will remind voters everywhere voting is not a game. One's life could very well depend upon someone you wouldn't want either behind you or have your daughter date. Due diligence is well-advised. :banghead:

 

[Jake]

Censorship? Why yes it is. Unfortunately, seeing as how there no longer appears to be any sense of honor, respect or decency left in todays media, it seems to me to be sadly and totally justified.

 

[mpthole]

Was watching a show on the History channel the other day about the 1900 Galveston hurricane. Back then, they shot anyone trying to take photographs of the dead (looters too for that matter).

 

[Ryder]

about the 1900 Galveston hurricane

Yup, I read an old newspaper account of this. They were calling them "Kodak Fiends" and subjecting them to firing squads. According to the article they only got two of them.

 

[Ryder]

Speaking of censorship

Why is it all about New Orleans? Sure they got deep water and I am sure that's no fun but half the state of Mississippi was blown to smithereens yet they are only getting 2% of the coverage?

 

[CZ-100]

After a week in the water, you are not going to identify anyone, the bodys will be bloated and decomposing.

 

[Geno]

No photos? Good, now they know how we feel.

For years the media has violated, and encouraged the violation, of OUR Constitutional rights Re: firearms. Guess maybe that opened the door to their Constitutional rights Re: free press being violated too.

Is it right? No!

What was the media and the courts said, ". . .there's no such thing as the private public." Okay, if it's public, it's open to coverage and snooping, and cameras, etc.

Dignity? Ooooohhhh! I see, the local, state and feds. allowing the dead to be buried with dignity that allowed them to DIE in a horrid abandonment?!?!?!

Sounds like a governmental cover-up to me...fortunately, it couldn't happen to a nicer group of people than the media.

Oh, I'm SURE I'm get flamed for this one, but I'm sick of the social INjustice in the new, kinder 'N' gentler, "Amerika". Anyone who disagrees with me (in spite of the 500,000 N.O.ers who agree with me) feel free to turn on the ignore botton.

Doc2005

 

[JohnBT]

I'd rather debate you with facts, but it would just aggravate you and waste my time.

Once upon a time in America people spread straw in the street to muffle the sounds of horses and wagons when a family was at home in mourning. Now some people argue that they're special and a have a right to pry and offend. I disagree.

John

 

[R.H. Lee]

What those morbid freaks want to do is make a mosaic of GWB with small pictures of the dead, just like they did with military men and women killed in Iraq. If they want photos of dead people, how about Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley and Andy Rooney. They're close enough. Or better yet, Peter Jennings is available for photo-ops. You'll just need a shovel.

 

[Tory]

The REST of the story

"I read an old newspaper account of this [ the Galveston Hurricane of 1900]. They were calling them "Kodak Fiends" and subjecting them to firing squads. According to the article they only got two of them."

Only the partial story. The "Kodak fiends" were photographing bodies of NAKED WOMEN; not victims generally.

Photographs of victims which do not so expose them, or show features in detail, would present no such problem.

For those with little or no knowledge of photojournalism (or even any memory of their history classes OR Ken Burn's "The Civil War"), Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan took BATTLEFIELD photos of amazing clarity and detail. One such exhibit, "The Dead of Antietam," did for that conflict what the evening news did for Viet Nam: Brought the battle TO the home front.

We survived those photos, those newscasts and the footage from Iraq. We can cope with New Orleans, people.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Censorship? How is it censorship to request that the media do not show pictures of dead bodies?

I haven't even been following the Katrina story closely and have already seen my share of bloated corpses on the evening news, so it isn't like FEMA is chasing them off with German Sheperds. They simply asked the media to behave like human beings with some tiny degree of compassion and then left them to behave in their normal fashion.

That hardly qualifies as censorship anywhere but in the great land of hyperbole that is the U.S.A.