Reporters and the Military
Sep. 8th, 2005 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jebbypalOne of the sites that is giving a glimpse into just how much the TV news reporters are recovering their journalistic skills (and integrity) is Daily Nightly, the blog for the reporters of the NBC Nightly news.
Below the cut is what Brian Williams has to say about how the military inside NO is handling the media. Funny, how the military doesn't mind embedded reporters in foreign countries, but it's not allowed in a city that is a part of the US.
We are just back from the French Quarter... checking up on the condition of some old haunts... Arnauds, Brennans... and most of the landmarks that people would remember visiting from even a single Convention-attending visit to New Orleans. We are happy to report that the Quarter is slowly drying out (while the Ritz Carlton hotel, for example, remains surrounded by rancid water that appears to be 30 percent oil) and cleaning up. There are a few random businesses open. It will be a long time before it resembles anything close to New Orleans.
An interesting dynamic is taking shape in this city, not altogether positive: after days of rampant lawlessness (making for what I think most would agree was an impossible job for the New Orleans Police Department during those first few crucial days of rising water, pitch-black nights and looting of stores) the city has now reached a near-saturation level of military and law enforcement. In the areas we visited, the red berets of the 82nd Airborne are visible on just about every block. National Guard soldiers are ubiquitous. At one fire scene, I counted law enforcement personnel (who I presume were on hand to guarantee the safety of the firefighters) from four separate jurisdictions, as far away as Connecticut and Illinois. And tempers are getting hot. While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of Guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.
At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.
We're putting a lot of material into the broadcast tonight, including (in part in response to a flood of e-mail requests) a story about the pets of this region like Cain/Storm my colleague Heather Allan blogs about below. They are often the last to be evacuated and the last to hold on. On any walk through this region you will see dogs without owners. It's heartbreaking to see... then again, there's a lot of that going around here these days.
Emphasis mine.
Below the cut is what Brian Williams has to say about how the military inside NO is handling the media. Funny, how the military doesn't mind embedded reporters in foreign countries, but it's not allowed in a city that is a part of the US.
We are just back from the French Quarter... checking up on the condition of some old haunts... Arnauds, Brennans... and most of the landmarks that people would remember visiting from even a single Convention-attending visit to New Orleans. We are happy to report that the Quarter is slowly drying out (while the Ritz Carlton hotel, for example, remains surrounded by rancid water that appears to be 30 percent oil) and cleaning up. There are a few random businesses open. It will be a long time before it resembles anything close to New Orleans.
An interesting dynamic is taking shape in this city, not altogether positive: after days of rampant lawlessness (making for what I think most would agree was an impossible job for the New Orleans Police Department during those first few crucial days of rising water, pitch-black nights and looting of stores) the city has now reached a near-saturation level of military and law enforcement. In the areas we visited, the red berets of the 82nd Airborne are visible on just about every block. National Guard soldiers are ubiquitous. At one fire scene, I counted law enforcement personnel (who I presume were on hand to guarantee the safety of the firefighters) from four separate jurisdictions, as far away as Connecticut and Illinois. And tempers are getting hot. While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of Guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.
At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.
We're putting a lot of material into the broadcast tonight, including (in part in response to a flood of e-mail requests) a story about the pets of this region like Cain/Storm my colleague Heather Allan blogs about below. They are often the last to be evacuated and the last to hold on. On any walk through this region you will see dogs without owners. It's heartbreaking to see... then again, there's a lot of that going around here these days.
Emphasis mine.