Journalists arrested after US Army copter hits TV tower
Sunday June 04th 2006, 11:49 am

image: Windows Live Local

WFXL & WALB TV tower site

A twin-rotor Chinook helicopter carrying 5 US Army personnel yesterday struck a guy wire on the 1000 foot tall WFXL-TV transmission mast near the small US town of Doerun in southwestern Georgia, causing the craft to crash, killing four of the five servicemen aboard.

The WFXL mast is still standing, though without one of the critical top 3 guy wires. The WFXL tower is only about 100 feet away from the WALB tower, also 1000 feet tall. If the WFXL tower falls, it could take down the WALB tower along with it.

The Army ‘locked down’ the crash scene. Reporter Brandon Beyer and videographer Phyllis Ho from nearby WTXL-TV in Tallahassee, Florida, who were trying to report on the crash, were arrested and charged with ‘obstruction.’ The arrests were ordered by the Army and carried out by the local county sherriff’s department.

Since when does the US Army have the authority to prevent journalists from reporting news within the USA? This is no different than if United Airlines would have tried to have newsies arrested for reporting on the September 11 2001 crashes of their aircraft.

Someone should inform the US Army that they can only bully journalists who are ’embedded’ with military units in Afghanistan and Iraq- they don’t have the authority to monster newsies working within the USA.

Early reports indicate that weather could be the cause of the collision:

Thursday morning weather was foul

June 1, 2006

Doerun — At news time, the South Georgia weather was hot and there were thick white clouds against a blue sky.

But about 8:00AM, the horizon looked very different. Cloud cover hid the top halves of the twin 1,000-foot towers.

Low cloud sounds a reasonable enough cause for this collision- so what is the US Army trying to hide?

-weez


4 Comments so far
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Pingback by Mental Floss » Army Orders Journalists Arrested… In Georgia. 06.06.06 @ 1:06 pm

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but perhaps they were simply trying to hide their own incompetance. Because we all know that that never happens…

Comment by Evan 06.07.06 @ 5:24 am

I didn’t realize that the US was now a military state, but it shouldn’t be a wonder really should it – u prolly shouldn’t draw attention to it, Mini W will want to have it here too.

Comment by ab 06.08.06 @ 10:26 pm

ab, I’m not so worried about publicising failed US military cover-ups. Howard is more likely to emulate the ones that they are able to get away with.

The WFXL tower was deemed unrepairable, so Controlled Demolition Inc. was brought in to bring it down with explosives. Unfortunately, the WFXL stick snagged the guys for the nearby WALB tower and brought it down as well.

See video on WALB website. Link doesn’t work well in Firefox for me. Try using IE if you also have difficulty.

Comment by weez 06.09.06 @ 10:18 am



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