It sounds like something new has been added to modern day America: the Pentagon is reportedly ignoring the spirit of a court order preventing the government from barring press coverage of recovery of bodies of people killed in Hurricane Katrina.
The issue here is not the bodies and whether they should be shown in photos (that’s a separate issue). The issue now is that the court issued a restraining order and the govenment didn’t contest it — and now the Pentagon is reportedly in effect refusing to let reporters do what the courts said they cannot be banned from doing. So does this mean court orders don’t mean anything anymore? The San Francisco Chronicle (see link in first paragraph) reports:
Outside one house on Kentucky Street, a member of the Army 82nd Airborne Division summoned a reporter and photographer standing nearby and told them that if they took pictures or wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would take away their press credentials and kick them out of the state.
“No photos. No stories,” said the man, wearing camouflage fatigues and a red beret.
On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.
But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn’t being followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires media to be 300 meters — more than three football fields in length — away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military operations.
So let’s get this straight:
- A court issues a restraining order. The government doesn’t challange it.
- The press goes to do its job, it’s prevented from doing so despite the restraining order that the court issued and the government didn’t contest.
- So if you like some decisions courts hand down, obey them and, if they’re on your side, insist others follow the law. If they’re not what you like, ignore them or violate the spirit or even the letter of what the court ordered.
- Do this also at a time when your government is trying to nominate a Chief Justice to the Supreme Court and, very soon, another Supreme Court justice.
- Do this when you expect Americans will follow whatever rulings the Supreme Court hands down, even if they are rulings that differ from previous rulings.
- Talk about how important it is to get justices on the Supreme Court who follow the spirit and letter of the law — but allow, sanction or perhaps even instigate the violation of a court restraining order that you don’t like.
Question: with each day isn’t it clear that this government is getting a credibility problem akin to the administrations of Lyndon Baines Johnson (Democrat) and Richard Nixon (Republican)?
Read these details as well:
During a hearing Saturday morning in U.S. District Court in Houston, a lawyer who represented the government said FEMA had revised its previous plans to limit coverage.
Government agencies may still refuse requests from members of the media to ride along, or be “embedded,” on recovery boats as crews gather the dead. “But, to the extent the press can go out to the locations, they’re free to do that,” said Keith Wyatt, an assistant U.S. attorney, according to a transcript of the hearing. “They’re free to take whatever pictures they can take.”
Army Lt. Col. Richard Steele said the government’s position as explained in court Saturday didn’t represent a change in policy. Reporters can watch recovery efforts they come upon, but they won’t be embedded with search teams.
“We’re not going to bar, impede or prevent” the media from telling the story, he said. “We’re just not going to give the media a ride.”
Sorry, Lt. Col. Steele: what the Chronicle reports sounds a LOT MORE PROACTIVE than what you’re describing. It sounds like intimidation and censorship of the press.
So cut away all the political nicities and you get this:
The government is seemingly ignoring the court order and doing whatever it can, using whatever legalistic loopholes it can, to prevent the press from doing what the court ordered it be allowed to do — something the government didn’t bother to contest in court.
Why bother to contest it in court when you can use raw political power to ignore the courts?
And why hold back if you’re doing all this at a time when you’re presenting your nominee for Supreme Court Justice? (“Hypocrisy – what’s that?”)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.