In this, it matters not what one’s political persuasion is. This should be disturbing to every American citizen. FEMA deliberately faked a news conference. In the foreign press, this has been skewered. It has been compared to what a developing nation would do or a country where people are free to vote - for one party. It falls into the schema of ‘vote early - vote often’.

This was a deliberate deception. The regular reporters were not given ample time to attend. The reporters could listen to the ‘news conference’ but they were not allowed to ask questions. There is no doubt that some of these reporters are well known to the FEMA people. This is their coverage assignment. However, the reporters were not allowed to ask questions because the FEMA officials had their own agenda for this charade.

The questions were deliberately easy and allowed FEMA to be self congratulatory. Let us clearly state how inappropriate this was. In California, people were being displaced by fire. Homes were being burned to the ground. Lives were lost. People’s lives were in turmoil and the FEMA officials saw this as an opportunity to generate some fake public relations points.

That is disgusting.

The behaviour tramples on the rights and the role of the press. It throws FEMA’s credibility down the sewer. For a government agency mandated with responsibility for the welfare and care of its citizens, integrity should matter. Truthfulness matters. FEMA officials say that this was an error in judgment. Then clearly, if people have this type of judgment, then they should not be in roles of federal responsibility. Whoever is responsible should not have a job with the federal government.

FEMA has apologized - well, apology not accepted.

Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/

addendum: “I think it was one of the dumbest and most inappropriate things I’ve seen since I’ve been in government.”
Michael Chertoff
Secretary of Homeland Security
link: Chertoff Says FEMA California Wildfires Press Conference: Disciplinary Action

Tags: fema, deception, integrity, michael chertoff, news conference, reporters, government