It's (semi-) official, the media's not allowed in.

[donsu]

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/25195

Yesterday we looked at the suspicious actions of FEMA, working tirelessly to whitewash their failure and now...

Peek guest blogger Lindsay Beyerstein is down in Louisiana with Bob Brigham of the Swing State Project who writes:
"We are in Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans. At the National Guard checkpoint, they are under orders to turn away all media. All of the reporters are turning they're TV trucks around. Things are so bad, Bush is now censoring all reporting from NOLA. The First Amendment sank with the city."

Jeralyn Merritt also quotes NBC's Brian Williams' chilling description:
"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."
-----------------------------------


the fix is in

[bpilgrim]

1. Now where are all the DU CT to scream "It's ALL in your HEADS!"

:shrug:

peace

[Warren Stupidity]

5. after the fact they just pretend we wern't right all along.

and refuse to admit that we aren't 'jumping to conclusions' but rather 'willing to state the obvious'.

Oh well. Cassandras, each and every one of us.

[onecent]

2. Can we do anything about this kind of stuff here in America?

I mean, I feel so helpless, but won't this PISS off the media - the ones WHO REALLY KNOW THE FAILURES?

[Wilber_Stool]

3. I guess they've all been

promised a job with the new Dept. of Information.

[eek]

4. looking back, the "snipers" which I all along

felt were phony or exaggerated were early grassroots efforts to support this excuse for keeping media out.

No, Mr Reporter. can't let you in. Too dangerous!

[corkhead]

6. never mind all the human tragedy, they want the cameras off

to "handle" all of the pets that people were forced to leave behind. Video would not play well on the nightly nooze.

[Cleita]

7. I miss the days of the great correspondents, the ones who

risked their lives to go behind the iron curtain with only pad and pen to get their exclusives stories in places where a free press was not allowed.

Where are those guys?