A day in the life of an on board press officer
This is from Jo onboard the Rainbow Warrior in the Mediterranean - currently in the region as part of the Quit Coal tour
There we were sailing along towards the Ashkelon plant, trying to work out the best spot to meet the media boat that’s coming to film our protest, but a rather less welcome boat got there first. It was a navy boat, closely followed by a police boat. The police boarded, the media boat joined us and boarded too. Our quiet sailing ship became quite the buzzing hub for a while with 30 odd journalists capturing everything.
Then it started to get uglier – the hired media boat had to leave because the police were threatening to arrest him and take away his license. They were serious. We wanted to keep some journalists on board, but Israeli immigration policies are something else and it just wasn’t possible.
So then, as a press officer having lost our journalists, the stress became whether we would be able to make media deadlines and get the footage of the planned activities out in time? No internet here yet – though we’re working on it, so getting stuff out of the ship can be slow.
The team set off. Painted a coal ship...
Though we did confuse the Filipino captain “Why you do this? “You paint it a different colour, it’s ugly now” he said through the radio. Luckily our Filipino cook Ronnie was on hand to explain what our campaign was, that we weren’t targeting him, but his cargo – the coal he was unloading to the Ashkelon plant.
Turned out my concerns as to how we would get footage off the ship in time were a little ahead of the game. All the inflatables involved in the painting were arrested, including our photo and video people. Then the captain was too – when we were boarded by big police with big guns.
We’re all good now – did get our pictures out complete with pretty violent arrests, though somewhat later than planned. Luckily, no-one was seriously hurt. We’ve been deported though so we’re heading out of Israel to Turkey. Watch this space.
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