BP, Coast Guard Officers Block Journalists From Filming Oil-Covered Beach

reply to post by maybereal11


Yeah that is true. If I lived around there I would most certainly take my gear and go. Even under threat of arrest I'd go and I would make 100% sure that all audio around me gets recorded. Also having one of those small point and shoot cameras with video hanging from your neck recording is very handy. If I'd get arrested I would sue them to high heavens afterwards.

The Coast Guard has officially responded to this incident...

Source
Since this initial brief report, the CBS video clip has been widely reposted, but there has apparently been no followup from either CBS or BP. The Coast Guard, however, released a statement from Rob Wyman, Lieutenant Commander, USCG, Deepwater Horizon Unified Command.

"Neither BP nor the U.S. Coast Guard, who are responding to the spill, have any rules in place that would prohibit media access to impacted areas and we were disappointed to hear of this incident. In fact, media has been actively embedded and allowed to cover response efforts since this response began, with more than 400 embeds aboard boats and aircraft to date. Just today 16 members of the press observed clean-up operations on a vessel out of Venice, La.

The only time anyone would be asked to move from an area would be if there were safety concerns, or they were interfering with response operations. This did occur off South Pass Monday which may have caused the confusion reported by CBS today."

The entities involved in the Deepwater Horizon/BP Response have already reiterated these media access guidelines to personnel involved in the response and hope it prevents any future confusion.
This statement has provoked additional concerns, however, since it apparently indicates that the practice of military "embeds" is being extended to this domestic crisis.

Sounds like bologna to me however because apparently BP has some esoteric authority over the affected local Governments as well...

Source
For instance, the parishes have been clearly forbidden by the Coast Guard and BP to place boom or spray dispersants on their own.

If the legitimate concern is for these reporters' safety, then why the alleged confiscations of camera equipment? Why has the Coast Guard been parroting the 5000 barrels a day estimate, indeed, BP claims the estimate was in part derived from the Coast Guard's Air Command. Strange bedfellows indeed.

Couple other items of interest while I was browsing the news...
BP asks for military tech to contain oil spill

Coast Guard officials told of potential oil spill response problems years ago

Mobile scientists' warnings about oil dispersants ignored by BP, Coast Guard

Source
"The EPA had to approve and the Unified Command and the Coast Guard had to approve the use of that product. It is approved and in fact we've been using it and it has been effective," BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles told "Good Morning America" today....
"Any living organism that contacts this stuff, particularly the mixture of dispersant and oil, is at significant risk of acute mortality," said marine biologist Rick Steiner.

In fact, EPA testing released Thursday indicates that where the dispersant had been used, 25 percent of all organisms living at 500 feet below the surface died.

Safety concerns my bum. Did the boat they were using somehow not fill the safety qualifications? Since when has safety concerns been basis for arrest anyway?

[Edit to add] Btw, is this beach on an island? Is there a bridge or something to this location?

[edit on 21/5/2010 by PsykoOps]

Why is this a suprise? Coast guard guys retire after their 20 years, collect their pensions and then go to work for the oil companies. That is why the oil companies own the coast guard.

WTH!?? That just ain't right. Grrrr. I hope they bring in a helicopter.

I ask myself this question all this time when there's an alternative for things...Why hemp still illegal? ... oh wait, its much safer and not too profitable but hey thats another thread

Its sad whats happening out in the sea..... and in our world.... I just like how Katie Couric didnt follow up with more questions about it, instead went on to a whole other different related news... but thats from that clip.. Dont know if they were talking about it before this clip started.

Information is being suppressed right under our noses

Who is overlooking BP in this? the USA government?

reply to post by Snappahead


Oh give us all a break! Come on what rules does BP have that supercede the constitution? You must be an employee of BP to take such a stand. Ths is catastrophic and defending any corporate entity shows your merit. You should bow your head in shame.

Originally posted by twitchy
Apparently the BP Oil Spill cover-up is in now in full swing and we the people get a rare glimpse of just how entagled our Governement and Coporate interests really are. If this source is correct, which cites the Huffington Post and CBS, then BP is literally riding around with an entourage of Coast Guard Officers warning people not to film the oil spill or face arrest. There are reports of equipment being confiscated...
Well, is just begs the question, who the hell is the Coast Guard working for these days?

Source

BP, Coast Guard Officers Block Journalists From Filming Oil-Covered Beach (VIDEO)
Reported by Huffington Post on Wednesday, 19 May 2010 (10 hours ago)
Emerging reports are raising the question of just how much of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill journalists are able to document.

When CBS tried to film a beach with heavy oil on the shore in South Pass, Louisiana, a boat of BP contractors, and two Coast Guard officers, told them to turn around, or be arrested.

"This is BP's rules, it's not ours," someone aboard the boat said. Coast Guard officials told CBS that they're looking into it.

As the Coast Guard is a branch of the Armed Forces, it brings into question how closely the government and BP are working together to keep details of the disaster in the dark.

Furthermore, this may not be the sole incident of its kind. According to Mother Nature Network's Karl Burkhart, his contacts in Louisiana have given him unconfirmed reports of equipment being turned away or confiscated.

Damage control for BP's reputation, on our dime? Where does BP get the authority to arrest anyone here in the US via our own Coast Guard, especially if they were Drilling Illegally for this now spewing 100,000 Barrels a Day that we can see from space.

My apologies if the story has already been posted, ran across and got mad enough to start a thread.

i'm hoping these media folk have the balls to sue the US government......clear violation of the constitution.

reply to post by maybereal11


Kinda goes with this (I'm just gonna paste it...as I couldn't have said it better than getreadyalready):

Well here is a scenario:

"This is BP rules, not ours."

In other words, your film crew is being paid by CBS, CBS is being paid by large advertisers like BP! BP is spending millions of dollars in marketing for the Gulf Coast and also for themselves to counteract this disaster.

So, "This is BP rules" means if you want to keep getting a paycheck, quit messing with BP. "Not Ours" means please don't blame us Coast Guard guys, we are sickened by the orders to be here protecting these BP criminals, but we need a paycheck too!

Nice little statement slipped in there by a very savvy Coast Guard soldier!

I think it's obvious just how complicit "our" so-called watchdogs are. It's actually quite laughable.

Everyone should be turning off the TV, and going down there with our cameras.

Yeah, I think it's time for a little vacation.

If CBS were paid by the BP goons then they wouldn't make them look bad in the media like this. I think it's more like a case of coast guard sleeping in the same bed with BP where their future jobs are going to be.

BP is a cog in the wheel owned by the evil empire. It's board of directors reads like a who's who list of Bilderbergers, Trilateralists and CFR members. Im hardly surprised that it's actually BP that's regulating the government rather than the other way around.

I'm also hardly surprised that CBS needs a spinal transplant. They should have sent some of their people to jail so that they could expose this in the courts.

And the cover-up/conspiracy continues.
I wonder if we will ever really know what happened, why the silence from normally-rabid environmental groups, why the slow reaction of the federal government.

What this episode with CBS, the Coast Guard and BP could mean, and it doesn't look good for America:

It may seem over-the-top to place the incident between BP and CBS in the context of incidents between governments and press in other countries. But, with the consent of a military organization like the Coast Guard, threats of arrest made against journalists or individuals seeking to conduct coverage of a situation especially in public areas like beaches must be compared because, if it is not challenged, the repression could rise to the level of actual arrest and detention of individuals on a regular basis.

Either journalists and individuals who believe in their right to document and gather information allow authorities, corporations or organizations to place restrictions on access or they challenge it. If challenged, invariably one must expect incidents like the ones covered by Reporters Sans Frontieres to occur. If BP is serious about controlling the images and words seen in relation to the oil leak, they will have to repress people.

At a time when surveillance is entirely acceptable and normal, when cameras at traffic intersections photograph those running red lights, when cameras watch your every move in city, state, federal or private buildings, when street cameras track movements of people in areas thought to have high levels of crime, the public must decide whether it will or should assert its right to survey and cover anything in the same way that authorities, corporations or organizations would assert their right to survey and cover anything.

www.opednews.com...

Source

A BP cleanup worker rakes oil from the beach on May 22, 2010 on Elmer's Island, Louisiana. Authorities closed the popular tourist beach to the public and media wishing to visit the beach must be escorted by a BP official. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Media must be escorted by a BP official? Says who? This is, or was rather, a public beach, yet BP has some authority here over the media now as well as the Coast Guard and local governments. What the hell is going on here, where does BP get ANY authority to tell anybody to do anything? The more I read about how this is being handled, the more pissed off I get.
So we have to have BP's permission and BP's escort to photograph a public beach now, wow. Any legal geeks here want to take a stab at explaining to the rest of us exactly where BP gets this kind of authority over the media, the Coast Guard, affected local governments, or residents of the area here?

It's not about the legal side. It's the money side. As far as I can tell there is no law in existence that would give BP such authority.

This entire story is quite hypocritical. First of all, the source is the Huffington Post. They quote UNCONFIRMED reports of equipment being confiscated, repeat UNCONFIRMED.
In addition, the HUFFINGTON POST is a huge advocate of the "FAIRNESS DOCTRINE", the intent of which is to stifle free speech of many media organizations.
www.huffingtonpost.com...

Revive The Fairness Doctrine

For those not familiar with the "Fairness Doctrine":

Legislation currently is before Congress that would reinstate a federal communications policy known as the "fairness doctrine." The legislation, entitled the "Fairness in Broadcasting Act of 1993," is sponsored in the Senate (S. 333) by Ernest Hollings, the South Carolina Democrat, and in the House (H.R. 1985) by Bill Hefner, the North Carolina Democrat. It would codify a 1949 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation that once required broadcasters to "afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance." The fairness doctrine was overturned by the FCC in 1987. The FCC discarded the rule because, contrary to its purpose, it failed to encourage the discussion of more controversial issues. There were also concerns that it was in violation of First Amendment free speech principles. The legislation now before Congress would enshrine the fairness doctrine into law.

www.heritage.org...


You can't have it both ways.

This is FALSE. show me one credible source that talks about a media ban there. that happened weeks ago and was simply a couple of misinformed coast guard chief petty officers

reply to post by Tharsis


I agree. Where are the journalists with a spine?

The First Amendment is useless if no one demands it.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


so you disregard the information presented because of your own partisan interpretation of the 'fairness doctrine' and your own bias towards the huffpo?