{"id":8036,"date":"2006-07-26T12:29:22","date_gmt":"2006-07-26T16:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8036.html"},"modified":"2006-07-26T12:29:22","modified_gmt":"2006-07-26T16:29:22","slug":"fema-no-longer-muzzling-hurricane-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/fema-no-longer-muzzling-hurricane-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"FEMA no longer muzzling hurricane victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I noted<\/a> that FEMA said it has a “policy” that prevents hurricane victims living in FEMA trailer parks from doing interviews with [tag]reporters[\/tag]. Journalists had already been removed from public property for speaking with residents and FEMA insisted that people living in the [tag]trailers[\/tag] need government “escorts<\/a>” to sit in on all media interviews.<\/p>\n

I suggested that the policy would be reversed because FEMA was inviting a lawsuit it was certain to lose. Fortunately, the agency backed down<\/a> yesterday.<\/p>\n

FEMA announced Tuesday that it reversed a policy restricting media access to its trailer parks and received cautious praise from Louisiana congressmen and a national journalism organization. […]<\/p>\n

Over the past 10 days, The Advocate published two stories and an editorial about FEMA’s policy restricting media access to its trailer parks. The articles prompted widespread reaction and prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to review and change its policy.<\/p>\n

“You pointed out some very good points that we shouldn’t be trying to muzzle the press,” Stark said Tuesday of why the policy was changed. The new policy, put into place Tuesday “will allow media full access to the group site trailer parks” without representatives of [tag]FEMA[\/tag] accompanying them, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rep. Charlie Melancon (D), who has publicly condemned FEMA’s policy, was cautiously optimistic about the change, but added, “I just hope they’re being honest with you. I think I’ll have to see it first before I believe it.”<\/p>\n

When it comes to FEMA during the Bush years, that’s probably wise. At this point, however, this appears to be a story with a happy ending.<\/p>\n

Now, if we can only get to the bottom of why FEMA felt justified in muzzling hurricane victims and stifling the freedom of the press in the first place, we’d really make some progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I noted that FEMA said it has a “policy” that prevents hurricane victims living in FEMA trailer parks from doing interviews with [tag]reporters[\/tag]. Journalists had already been removed from public property for speaking with residents and FEMA insisted that people living in the [tag]trailers[\/tag] need government “escorts” to sit in on all media […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}