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Comment by andreyf | Hacker News Reader

How can you take those pictures?

Use your imagination ;)

Edit (for you down-voters): Fine, here's some off the top of my head:

  * Rent your own plane and fly over without permission,
  * register a fishing company and get a job working for BP,
  * find a way to take pictures while avoiding detection, or just
  * bribe the fishermen.

These are off the top of my head, I imagine someone whose full time job depends on thinking of them will have many more and better ones.

Edit-reply: you're right about my first example, if violating the FAA regulations is as risky as it sounds. But my larger point, that entrepreneurial journalists should be able to find a low-risk way, stands.

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You're right in your final concession, but this is where the weakening of mainstream media is most obvious. My guess is there are fewer reporters per publication on the ground with smaller expense accounts and fewer overall resources than what was available to their brethren covering Valdez in 1989.

As a result they have to write whiny stories about how they can't get access when the story they wanted to have falls through. Newsweek should have left those pages blank with the words "oil spill photo spread here" instead.

What you propose risks criminal and civil liability from multiple directions. Few, if any, photojournalists can afford to take such risks. Most news organizations won't. Yes, disasters and war are where much great photojournalism takes place. But it's ironically easier to do that abroad with the specter of the mighty US State Department at your shoulder than it is in your own backyard, where you're just a meddling shutterbug on the make and in the way - and will be described as such by an ambitious prosecutor.

Sure,it's worth a try and might make for some great photos. But being accused of endangering safety or hampering the mission or both by the Feds is not fun, and rather than threatening you with a possible first-amendment case, it's a lot easier for them to go after your pilot and pressure them into signing a statement saying you suborned them into an illegal act.

For these reasons, it's much likelier that news orgs will seek an injunction or declaratory judgment permitting them to gather pictures and video, rather than proceed by stealth.

This is pure FUD. What criminal and civil statutes would be violated by taking a picture of a public place? Something a low-level drone working for the government says does not a law make.

Tell you what - hack into the SEC and DOJ servers and give me the skinny on that Goldman Sachs case. Yeah I know access is restricted, but its our tax dollars, right? I mean, what could go wrong?

Basically, if you persuade the pilot of a plane or boat to flout FAA or Coast Guard regulations by bribery or deception, you could be charged with reckless endangerment or be accused of having committed various torts. I do not agree with this media blackout at all, but as a practical matter most journalists and pilots would rather not run afoul of some overstressed official with arrest powers.

Who's funding these entrepreneurial journalists?

"The truth" is worth a lot of gratitude and 0 actual dollars.

Journalism is all about advertising, i.e., page views and publications sold.

This is one of the hottest topics in the U.S. right now.

Nobody likes dry analysis; everyone is eager for a quick, vivid, and emotionally compelling way to engage with the story.

Therefore, if you publish more and better pictures than the competition, you'll attract more (non-)readers and make more money.

Still doesn't add up. You're talking about a huge expenditure and significant personal risk in order to hopefully be a viral hit and not just be scooped and republished. Even then, you have to get lucky and pick up an iconic photo, it's not like you're going to find a bunch of great prose in the ocean besides synonyms for "lots of gallons".

Why pursue this story instead of one that's much cheaper and will get you only a fewer impressions on average?

If the photographers are already in the region racking up travel expenses and trying to charter private planes, expense isn't the problem.

I'm sure you recognize the scale of numbers, but as currently suggested the current surface area for the spill is:

157,168 square km

So if you think there's a way to rent a plane to avoid FAA regulations over this enormous area, or bribe fisherman to do this and potentially risk their lives, go ahead.

Also add:

* Balloons! http://bit.ly/99sLWo

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