New Law Prevents Media From Photographing Oil-Soaked Wildlife

Update 07/15/10: On Monday, July 12, 2010 the Associated Press reported that the Coast Guard has lifted the ban on the media access to the spill, unless there are direct security or safety threats. While it's still difficult for volunteers to get close enough to help, the media is no longer blocked from bearing witness to the greatest ecological disaster in U.S. history.

According to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the Times-Picayune, and several other news sources, the Coast Guard has put new restrictions that prevent the public — including members of the media — from approaching within 65-feet of response vessels or booms on the water or beaches.

And since booms are often placed more than forty feet from islands or marshlands, this means that photographers, bloggers, reporters, and even volunteers, won’t be able to get close enough to oil-drenched wildlife to bear witness. To report. To help.

Violators will face a $40,000 fine and prosecution for a Class D felony.

Welcome to 1984. This is the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. History. Eleven lives were lost in the initial blow-out and the death toll of wildlife — birds, dolphins, sea turtles, fish, and sharks — cannot be tallied. B.P., and now the Coast Guard, want to make sure it stays that way.

As Anderson Cooper reported on Saturday, "By now you're probably familiar with cleanup crews stiff-arming the media, private security blocking cameras, ordinary workers clamming up, some not even saying who they're working for because they're afraid of losing their jobs."

The buffer zone has been implemented under the guise of safety, to “protect members of the response effort ... by limiting access to and through deployed protective boom," according to the news release. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said that this isn’t "unusual." I say, who cares if it’s unusual? It is unnecessary. It is unconscionable. It is unacceptable.

Photographers on land aren’t the only ones being stonewalled; when Ted Jackson of The Times-Picayune attempted to charter a flight to capture photographs of the spill, he was told no media flights could go below 3,000 feet.

But as Anderson Cooper reported, the media isn't the enemy here. "I have not heard about any journalist who has disrupted relief efforts. No journalist wants to be seen as having slowed down the cleanup or made things worse. If a Coast Guard official asked me to move, I would move," he stated.

With no way to capture images like these, the public will be kept from seeing the worst, most incriminating evidence of the effects the Deepwater Horizon disaster is having on wildlife. Not to mention the impact the new law will have on volunteers; people won’t be able to get close enough to help.

It is easy, in cases such as these, where the problem is so malignant and so enormous, to look away. To shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, we tried.” And with the new law, the government, with B.P.’S blessing, is giving us another, stronger excuse to do just that. To fly to other beaches for our summer vacations. To read the funnies and the Arts & Leisure section instead of the dire headlines. To ignore the immeasurable tragedy occurring not in some distant nation but in our own country.

But the price now is even higher than the cost of the thousands, or perhaps millions, of dead animals that the Deepwater Horizon spill will claim. The first amendment is also at stake. So tell the Coast Guard and President Obama, that you will not look away. Tell them that you care about the wildlife affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill and about the health of our oceans. Tell them that you have a right to know what is happening in the Gulf, and that you will not be ignored.

Photo credit: ingridtaylar