sorry, Katrina took away your first amendment rights

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http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2924

 

 

Action Alert

 

FEMA a Disaster for Freedom of the Press

Katrina victims “not allowed” to talk to media, reporter told

 

7/21/06

 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency prohibits journalists from having

unsupervised interviews with Hurricane Katrina victims who have been relocated

to FEMA trailer parks, according to a report in the Baton Rouge Advocate

(7/15/06).

 

“If a resident invites the media to the trailer, they have to be escorted by a

FEMA representative who sits in on the interview,” FEMA spokesperson Rachel

Rodi is quoted in the article. “That’s just a policy.”

 

The Advocate report, by reporter Sandy Dennis, describes two separate attempts

to talk to people displaced by Katrina that were halted by the intervention of a

FEMA security guard. In the first incident, in a Morgan City, Louisiana camp, an

interview was interrupted by a guard who claimed that residents of the camp are

“not allowed” to talk to the media.

 

Dekotha Devall, whose New Orleans home was destroyed by the storm, was in her

FEMA-provided trailer telling the Advocate reporter of the hardships of life in

the camp when a security guard knocked on the door.

 

“You are not allowed to be here,” the guard is quoted as telling the reporter.

“Get out right now.” The guard reportedly called police to force the

journalist to leave the camp, and even prevented the reporter from giving the

interview subject a business card. “You will not give her a business card,”

the guard said. “She’s not allowed to have that.”

 

Later, at another FEMA camp in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, the reporter

attempted to talk to camp resident Pansy Ardeneaux through a chain link fence

when the same guard halted the interview. “You are not allowed to talk to these

people,” the guard told Ardeneaux. “Return to your trailer now.” The reporter

said she and an accompanying photographer were “ordered...not to talk to anyone

or take pictures.”

 

Earlier, an interview with displaced Katrina victims by Amy Goodman of Democracy

Now! (4/24/06) was halted by FEMA security guards. Tape-recording the accounts

of residents of the FEMA-run Renaissance Village camp outside Baton Rouge,

Louisiana, Goodman was approached by FEMA-hired security guards from Corporate

Security Solutions who told her to “turn it off.” When Goodman explained that

the resident had asked to be interviewed, she was told, “He can't. That’s not

his privilege.”

 

At first, the resident talking to Goodman was told by the guard, “You can go

get interviewed as long as it’s off post.” But when the resident offered to

continue the interview outside the camp, the guard said, “Yes, you can be

interviewed... if they had a FEMA representative with them, but since they

don’t and do not have an appointment....” Interviews are allowed to proceed,

the guard noted, when “they have the FEMA public relations officer with them.”

 

In concluding the segment on her visit to the camp, Goodman reported, “As we

drove off of Renaissance Village, we were chased by the guards in golf carts,

who said they would be taking down our license plate and that we couldn't

return.”

 

Restrictions on the right of citizens to speak freely to the press without

government supervision are a clear violation of the 1st Amendment. “They cannot

deny media access,” Gregg Leslie, the legal defense director of the Reporters

Committee for Freedom of the Press, told the Advocate, saying that FEMAÂ’s

restrictions were “clearly unconstitutional … and definitely not legal.”

Referring to the requirement that interview subjects have a FEMA escort, Leslie

said, “That’s a standard for a prison, not a relief park and a temporary

shelter.”

 

Timothy Matte, the mayor of Morgan City, expressed surprise that FEMA was

enforcing limits on the free speech of disaster victims. “You would think the

people would have the same freedom there as everyone else has,” he said.

 

 

 

ACTION: FEMA’s website urges citizens to report “allegations of civil

liberties or civil rights abuses” to the Department of Homeland Security’s

inspector general, who is Richard L. Skinner.

 

 

CONTACT:

Inspector General Richard L. Skinner

Department of Homeland Security

Washington, DC 20528

E-mail: DHSOIGHOTLINE

 

See Baton Rouge Advocate: “Hundreds of FEMA Trailers Stand Empty” (7/15/06) by

Sandy Dennis

 

See Democracy Now!: “FEMA's Dirty Little Secret: A Rare Look Inside the

Renaissance Village Trailer Park, Home to Over 2,000 Hurricane Katrina

Evacuees” (4/24/06) by Amy Goodman

 

 

If George Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headline would read, " Views

Differ on Shape of the Earth "