Coast Guard Bans Reporters from Oil Cleanup Sites
July 6th, 2010Via: Raw Story:
Journalists who come too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission could find themselves facing a $40,000 fine and even one to five years in prison under a new rule instituted by the Coast Guard late last week.
It’s a move that outraged observers have decried as an attack on First Amendment rights. And CNN’s Anderson Cooper describes the new rules as making it “very easy to hide incompetence or failure.”
The Coast Guard order states that “vessels must not come within 20 meters [65 feet] of booming operations, boom, or oil spill response operations under penalty of law.”
But since “oil spill response operations” apparently covers much of the clean-up effort on the beaches, CNN’s Anderson Cooper describes the rule as banning reporters from “anywhere we need to be.”
A “willful” violation of the new rule could result in Class D felony charges, which carry a penalty of one to five years in prison under federal law.
