Two weeks ago, Newsweek‘s Matthew Phillips reported that some photographers and other journalists were being “blockaded” from reporting on the oil spill by the government and BP:
The latest instance of denied press access comes from Belle Chasse, La.-based Southern Seaplane Inc., which was scheduled to take a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer for a flyover on Tuesday afternoon, and says it was denied permission once BP officials learned that a member of the press would be on board.
This looks like salacious story of (even more) corporate malfeasance by BP and the government restricting the freedom of the press, but the Federal Aviation Administration says it’s a misrepresentation of the facts. FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown explained to me that the temporary flight restriction (TFR) zone issued around the Gulf spill was requested by the Coast Guard. The request for a first-level TFR, restricting air traffic to only emergency crafts, came on May 2, and the zone has since increased in size as the extent of the spill has spread. Brown says the Gulf area, which normally sees 10,000 helicopter flights a day, has seen double that since the oil spill as emergency and military crews work to stop and contain the flow.
On May 28, however, the FAA issued an addendum to the TFR regarding exceptions to the emergency aircraft restriction. It reads:
Brown says that since May 28, every request by journalists made through the FAA’s public affairs office (organized into press pools in single helicopters) has been granted the above exception. Furthermore, she says, those journalists who say they were denied flight access were probably working through seaplane companies who did not receive exceptions. “If they had come through public affairs for the FAA, I would have been working to figure something out,” Brown says.
What about the claim that BP is involved in keeping reporters and photographers away from the spill? Brown says this comes from a misunderstanding. FAA and Coast Guard officials were working out of a BP office building in New Orleans to handle the TFR, she says, and a BP contractor at a nearby desk was helping man the phones during the crisis. This led to some confusion about BP’s role in the operation of the air space, which Brown says is absolutely none.
“If Newsweek had bothered to call me,” Brown says, this part of the story could have been cleared up.
