Remember when those
contractors were torched and hung from a bridge in Iraq?? That
photograph was all over the place. On the front of every newspaper, above the fold. On the 24 hour news networks. It was a horrific picture and I did my best to avoid looking directly at it. However,
the media has the right to print it. Interestingly, the
federal government had no problem with displaying those dead Americans.
There was no talk about protecting their families and respecting the dead. We all know why. According to King George,
the "evil doers" were responsible for those deaths and
the photograph solidified his argument that we needed to deliver the Iraqi people from evil.
Now that the blood of the dead is on Bush's hands,(not that it wasn't before) he suddenly cares about respecting the dead and protecting their families. Again, we all know the real reason. Bush knows he can't spin NOLA while images of corpses being pulled out of attics flash across our television screens.
HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) --
Rather than fight a lawsuit by CNN, the federal
government abandoned its effort Saturday to prevent the media from reporting on the recovery of the dead in New Orleans.
Joint Task Force Katrina "has no plans to bar, impede or prevent news media from their news gathering and reporting activities in connection with the deceased..." said Col. Christian E. deGraff.
U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison issued a temporary restraining order Friday against a "zero access" policy announced earlier in the day by Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who is overseeing the federal relief effort in the city, and Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security director.
In explaining the ban, Ebbert said, "we don't think that's proper" to let members of the media view the bodies....
In an e-mail to CNN staff, CNN News Group President Jim Walton said the network filed the lawsuit to "prohibit any agency from restricting its ability to fully and fairly cover" the hurricane victim recovery process.
"As seen most recently from war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, from tsunami-ravaged South Asia and from Hurricane Katrina's landfall along the Gulf," Walton wrote, "CNN has shown that it is capable of balancing vigorous reporting with respect for private concerns."...
"For an agency to unilaterally ban all coverage of a major component of its governmental function, that is, recovery of the deceased victims of the tragedy, is unprecedented," CNN argued in its legal brief....
CNN's brief argued, "It is not the place of government to replace its own internal judgment for that of a free and independent media"
Because of controversy about how FEMA and other agencies handled the disaster response, CNN lawyers argued, "it is even more vitally important for the public, Congress and the administration to have an independent view of the conduct of this important phase of the operation."
CNN.com
Here's the Link to Entire Story
The First Amendment doesn't protect certain types of speech. Some examples include obscenity, yelling fire in an auditorium, and perjury. However, the Supreme Court has consistently refused to increase the number of exceptions to the rule that all speech is protected by the first amendment. The Court applies strict scrutiny when determining whether laws passed by the state infringe on the freedom of speech or of the press.
Even in Texas, the Federal Judge knows that FEMA's proclamation that photos of the dead cannot be published is totally unconstitutional. I can't believe the government gave up so fast.