No free press for BP oil disaster

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52082

Hub Enterprises out of Broussard, Louisiana has a contract with BP to provide "security officers" and "supervisors". Don is being paid somewhere between 13 and 14 dollars an hour to do his part in helping BP keep a media lid on what is happening with the largest oil-related environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Last week's new media restrictions imposed by the Coast Guard subject journalists and photographers to as much as a 40,000-dollar fine, and from one to five years in jail as a class-D felon if they violate the 20-metre rule, that Unified Command calls a "safety zone".

In another incident, on Jul. 2, Lance Rosenfield, a photographer for the non-profit investigative journalism outlet ProPublica, was briefly detained by police while shooting pictures near BP's refinery in Texas City, Texas. According to Rosenfield, he was confronted by a BP security officer, local police, and a man identifying himself as an agent of the Department of Homeland Security.