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p.3 #17 · p.3 #17 · Nat Geo Photographer Arrested for Kansas Feedlot Flyover | |
VinWeathermon wrote:
That's exactly what I thought when I read their reasoning. It's one thing to nail them and then realize they weren't bio terrorists, and call off the dogs...it's another thing to "make an example" to make sure the precedence of seeing reality is squashed. Perhaps they are not as compliant as they ought to be.
Or maybe they just don't like people trespassing on their property.
Why does everyone seem to want to suggest/make the feedlot out to be the ones in the wrong here? They weren't the ones breaking the law, by enforcing the law. The suspicion/theory that the feedlot is up to no good (while it may or may not be true) is (presently) unfounded and conjured up in people mind's as to a reason for trying to explain why they would enforce the law.
There are a ton of industries/businesses that have "no trespassing" as part of protecting their interests. That doesn't mean they are doing anything wrong, just because they don't want people wandering, snooping, photographing or otherwise physically on their property. Their enforcement of "no trespassing" may be with regard to liability/insurance concerns if someone gets hurt while on their property or any other number of reasons why they don't want people on their property. This alone is sufficient reason to enforce trespassing violators. If they take a lax standpoint and something comes of it, it could have liability/insurance implications for them. Whether their reasoning is to safeguard privacy, security, safety, proprietary information or unpopular/distasteful reasons however is not the crux of the issue. Imo, the issue is very simply that they have chosen to have the law enforce the trespassing violation. Too simple, and no explanation of why they have chosen to do so is required.
Why have they chosen to take a "hardline" stance at having the law enforced ... they really don't need to explain why anymore than you or I need to explain why we don't want someone going around on our property, looking in our windows, going through our trash, taking pictures of our activities or even if some cranky coot wants to keep kids from taking shortcuts through his yard. It is his, our, their RIGHT (according to the law) and the law supports that right from having people trespassing on our property.
The mere fact that they chose to enforce the law is no indication of them having something to hide or having any wrong doing that "should" be exposed by the photographer. Just because the public (or we) doesn't understand WHY they may not want any trespassers ... or fabricates their own notion of why they would enforce the law ... doesn't make the feedlot the bad guy here.
As photographers, the image is fair game if taken from public property, vantage, access etc. As CITIZENS, it is NOT fair game for us to go wherever we want just because we have a camera in our hand. Having a camera does not somehow magically propel us above the law. The First Amendment grants us much ... it does not grant us carte blanche license to violate the rights of our fellow citizens or the law.
This is the part that concerns me about how NatGeo said they don't see where the photographer broke any laws. Sure, the trespass was "trivial" as far as laws/fines/business decisions go ... but the perspective that no law was broken, is not. If NatGeo doesn't have the integrity to say that a "trivial" law was violated and that they don't endorse such violations (but still endorse their guy), the least they could have done was go with something more along the lines of "no comment" or "we don't have enough information yet". No, instead they tried to get behind their money-maker and make like he had committed no violation, when it was rather clear that he had. Even an uneducated redneck, hillbilly from Dirt Poor, USA knows the difference between trespassing and not trespassing ... why doesn't NatGeo?
We can conjure up all kinds of reasons as to why the feedlot might be wanting to hide something (from wrong doing to distasteful) ... but that still doesn't make them the bad guy here. The only one that broke the law (according to the information/article presented) were the trespassers. The waters got muddied by the whole (imo, unnecessary) "airspace" thing, but the trespassers were still trespassing.
I'd like to think that most law enforcement, business owners and landowners would agree ... imo, too simple @ trespassers got fined for trespassing.
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