Blogger removed from evacuee shelter

[rainbow4321]

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/09/13/0913ikeblogger.html

A reporter with The Galveston County Daily News who blogged as an embedded evacuee at Crockett High School was asked to leave the shelter by Austin school officials on Friday.

Sara Foley, 26, who boarded a bus at the Island Community Center in Galveston, said she identified herself as a member of the media and told Red Cross officials and a City of Galveston public information officer that she planned to write about her experiences en route to and inside the shelter. She also indicated on shelter paperwork that she was a reporter.

As she took photographs of an altercation during breakfast — some people were yelling that they would have received better accommodations in jail, she said — an Austin police officer pulled her aside and escorted her to a Red Cross official, Foley said.

<snip>

About 5 p.m., the Austin School District contacted Foley's editor, Heber Taylor, and formally requested that she leave the shelter. Taylor and Foley complied and Foley is now staying with a friend in Austin.

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On edit: Here is the blog link:

http://galvestondailynews.com/blog.lasso?blog=f6ead363f0d801f3

[npk]

1. I thought we had something in the country called freedom of the press

But I guess that got amended recently under the Bush administration.

[Octafish]

8. Fascists don't like a free press.

It gives We the People ideas.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Odly I can see both sides

You do not want newsies as a disaster worker...reasons are legion

But...

There is this little thing called the first ammendment

[noamnety]

10. I can see it from both sides too

I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a person who has had to evacuate.

I'm in my own home right now, with an expectation of privacy. If I had a reporter who decided to live with me 24/7 and had the right to take pictures of me at will in my own home and blast them out to the news services, it would make me miserable beyond belief - it would be a gross invasion of privacy.

Here we have individuals who already are under immense amounts of stress, and are already living with virtually no privacy. Is it in their best interest to force them to be fodder for international media photos? Or is that exploiting them?

The shelter is going to have a full range of people from those who are outgoing and want to talk to the media, to those who are agoraphobic and are barely able to function in that environment, even without always being "on display." It's the rights of the latter group that concerns me, particularly if the blogger isn't required to get their permission before taking photos of them.

[glinda]

3. Bill Moyers had a great program tonight on PBS. Pass it along. It was on the Media.

Check it out if you can.

[Mind_your_head]

4. Oddly, I can see both sides as well......

Shelters are NOT hotels. Shelters are places where a whole lot of people have to manage to live together for a short period of time, in less than luxurious conditions, in order to secure the bodily safety of themselves - AND EACH OTHER.

Lots of people with different ideas/ways of thinking about things/customs are ALL together, where they usually wouldn't be.

It's a recipe for a few arguments/altercations perhaps....so be it that is 'life', and we all have to deal with it.

The 'managers'/workers at the shelter might have to be concerned that the blogger might give a one-sided view (of the 'horrible' conditions at the shelter? because a few ADULTS couldn't act like adults and not start/escalate something like a school-yard fight?) They would have to wonder if the blogger/writer would mention that the shelter DID THEIR JOB and kept them all safe from bodily harm - WHICH IS THE SHELTER'S ONLY FUNCTION.

Back in the day, a 'journalist' would usually have enough sense to report on the success of the shelter - that did it's job of SHELTERING - w/o mentioning very much (and not specifically) of that life "isn't perfect/desirable" in a shelter, BUT IT DID WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO DO - SHELTERED.

Me thinks, that too many people (not everyone) is soooo anxious to "make a story/have a scoop" that they will blow out of proportion things that happen and put the main focus on the wrong things (i.e., fight in the shelter that wasn't stopped by the 'school-marms', er shelter-people. What is this? Grade school? or life and death and help/shelter from a lot of people who don't HAVE TO GIVE IT)....and they don't want some person with a laptop and a wireless card defaming what is mostly VERY GOOD WORK by the shelter-ers.

Hope you understand where I'm coming from, b/c I CERTAINLY believe in First Amendment Rights, as long as 'Common Sense' goes along with that right. (Didn't Thomas Paine write a book titled 'Common Sense', btw?)

[Festivito]

7. Oddly, indeed.

Shall we always win the discard-the-journalist contest because they might be just after the scoop? Yes, I bet. After all those pesky journalist might occasionally get past the watchful eyes of those protecting us from egregiously over-the-top outrageously cynical watchers-not-doers, and write those scathing columns that get people talking trash at water coolers across the entire country. And, some day we'll get better and stop them from getting even those few lucky slitherings through the guard.

Less information is so much better in a world unable to tell the difference between what is over-the-top and what is not. Thankfully, there are those that guard keeping people from having to make those hard decisions of who is scooping to scoop and who is rightfully writing as they go to read about some horrid scoop.

Yes, we are lucky to have people who see both sides. You do see both sides, whereas others only see one side, and will continue to see only one side because of help from people like you. People who see both sides causing people to see only one side... odd, isn't it.

[MzNov]

9. The First Amendment has no conditions

there is no clause that says "as long as common sense goes with it." This blogger was not hurting anyone and she was there to report on things she saw.

Our constitutional rights have vanished into dirty polluted air, thanks to the horror that is the Bush Crime Family and those who think as you do.

[LiberalFighter]

5. Why is a school district determining who receives shelter during a disaster?

[bertman]

6. Jaheezus, do y'all always have to make things so frickin complicated? Authorities ALWAYS have the

RIGHT to tell us where we can stay, go, blog, sleep, shelter, eat, altercate, fornicate, and communicate. Get used to it. This is AMERIKA.

I understand to a tiny little point what you're saying about a journalist exposing the nasty, hairy underbelly of evacuations. BUT, maybe if we knew HOW FREAKIN GODAWFUL it was in those places we could devise a better system of dealing with it.

Or maybe not.

When in doubt always repeat to yourself "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

[SmileyRose]

11. That shelter is people's home right now.

I could be mistaken, but I think we still have a right not to have our most vulnerable moments in our own homes broadcast by reporters. It would be one thing if she wrote about conditions generally and used names only when that person gave permission, but the photographs where people have no choice are another matter entirely.

Looks to me like they had no problem with her reporting until the camera got whipped out.

Just MHO.

[northernlights]

12. I'm on the fence on this one, too

Freedom of the press versus right to some semblance of privacy.

I would *hate* for my worst moments to become international fodder for today's so-called press. And under that level of stress, I don't know whether I'd be at my best or my worst. I used to be at my best under pressure, but lately not so much.

Maybe she should have just stuck to writing and audio-recording. And my first thought was, why is she taking up needed space?