Hand Coding

As the government began its recovery operations in New Orleans and other Katrina-stricken areas, it prohibited the media from covering this; as Col. Terry Ebbert put it, “You can imagine sitting in Houston and watching somebody removed from your parents’ property. We don’t think that’s proper” And, in this instance, CNN took a reasonable course of action — they sued FEMA. In a memo to their staff, CNN explained their reasoning:

[…]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, CNN has shown that it is capable of balancing vigorous reporting with respect for private concerns. Government officials cannot be allowed to hinder the free flow of information to the public, and CNN will not let such a decision stand without challenge.

Some people might give FEMA the benefit of the doubt, that maybe this decision was a gut reaction that they didn’t quite think through. However, considering the amount of red tape that even the local DMV has, I can’t fathom that this was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Fortunately, a judge has granted a temporary restraining order “to prevent emergency officials in the Hurricane Katrina disaster zone from preventing the media from covering the recovery […]”.