This week's most profoundly wrongheaded display of nonviolent press infringement comes from an unlikely source: The U.S. Forest Service.
New rules being finalized in November state that—across this country's gloriously beautiful, endlessly photogenic, 36 million acres of designated wilderness area administered by the USFS—members of the press who happen upon it will need permits to photograph or shoot video.
And yes, it does sound like one of the dumbest things you've ever read.
"It's pretty clearly unconstitutional," said Gregg Leslie, legal defense director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Alexandria, Va. "They would have to show an important need to justify these limits, and they just can't."
Wait! It gets better.
[Liz Close, the Forest Service's acting wilderness director] didn't cite any real-life examples of why the policy is needed or what problems it's addressing. She didn't know whether any media outlets had applied for permits in the last four years.
The slap you just heard was of more than 34 million American hikers hitting palm to forehead. And the clicks you heard came from nature photographers from coast to coast ignoring those new rules.
Maybe outrage shouldn't be your first reaction. Maybe it's good for the forests. You won't have news crews traipsing about, trampling leaves. You won't get as frustrated as you might otherwise have been when you pass some dude with a camera on a trail. Maybe we'd all be better off, even.
Wrong.
The Organic Act of 1897, the legislation that kicked off, in a big way, the establishment of the modern U.S. Forest Service, clearly provides (emphasis added):
The jurisdiction, both civil and criminal, over persons within such reservations shall not be affected or changed by reason of the existence of such reservations, except so far as the punishment of offenses against the United States therein is concerned; the intent and meaning of this provision being that the State wherein any such reservation is situated shall not, by reason of the establishment thereof, lose its jurisdiction, nor the inhabitants thereof their rights and privileges as citizens, or be absolved from their duties as citizens of the State.
For any journalist, both parts of that statement are very important. All U.S. citizens enjoy the right of the First Amendment, and courts have very clearly upheld the rights of a citizen to take photographs taken in a public place—even the unpopular ones, and even ugly, boring
ones of trees and mountains.
Read more »
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/1000-dollar-fine-for-pictures-in-the-forest
