Friday, February 25, 2011

Steven Frischling's Category 5 Hurricane Tale!

Hurricane Georges: Frischling is under it somewhere
Once again we are presented with a Steven Frischling FishTale that becomes increasingly dramatic over time. In 1998, while Hurricanes Georges was bearing down on the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, Frischling claims the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) specifically called him (then a 23 year old freelance photographer) to accompany them to Florida! Frischling was faced with such a quandary over this situation that he posted the following to the National Press Photographers List:

from NPPA-L 9/27/98:
"On Friday FEMA contacted me and offered to  take me along on their releif mission to Florida from Andrews Air Force  Base outside of D.C. ( I live by JFK Airport in NY), they changed that  to The Gulf area, no problem.  Upon arrival at Andrews I am informed  that FEMA scrubbed the mission, but The Red Cross will help me out and  hook me up...no problem.  The Red Cross has always been helpful.  As of  Saturday morning I was supposed to goto Atlanta with a few staffers  (mostly nurses and mental health workers), 20 minutes after that call I  was informed that I'd have to drive to Atlanta from DC and meet them  (these people were leaving from Dulles Airport, outside DC).   and this  is how it has gone for three days now.  
I have decided that if I have no garuntee way to get what is my intended  assignment to head back to NY tomorrow morning.   I believe this  assignment to no longer be in my best interest for economic and time  reasons.   I discusses this with two folks before asking it on here  because one said departing the assignment is the best way to go, and the  other essentially told me "it is unmanly t give up"   Am I missing an  angle here?   3 days of non-stop conversations with FEMA, The D.O.D.,  Red Cross and military services where information gets lost and help is  always 2 steps away of red tape for me to get to......any suggestions or  is going back up to NY making more sense?  ....ack..... ( I love/hate this job, such a fine line between love and  hate, almost an illusion)" 
There is no follow up to the list to indicate that he did indeed go anywhere. You have to believe there would be, considering the dramatic scenes he later went on to describe in detail. In the next story, he actually did fly along with the U.S. Air Force to Puerto Rico. However their C5 military transport plane (which weighs 550,000 pounds empty) was apparently blown away by the winds!

from SportsShooter 9/26/02:
"A few years ago ('98?) I flew to Rosie Roads NAS via the good folks at the USAF to photograph preperations for Hurricane George. The flight was fairly simple, 4hr flight there, 4-6hrs on the ground, 4hr flight back (to Dover, DE, AFB). Nice relaxing flight, myself, a CBS twoperson crew, and the PIO. We land, we start to wander around, we go into the villages around the Air Statdion, we come back our C-5 was gone! 
All the cargo aircraft were ordered off the ground! Well at least I got some nice photos, and got back to my car in Delaware eventually (no ticket on the windshield :0) )"
Three years later, the story has become even more dramatic, and is now a life-and-death situation. This time he had to seek shelter in an aircraft hanger and the roof was ripped right off!

from Digital Wedding Forum 11/9/05:
"I protect my gear no matter where I am, which includes having taken my own gear to not only weddings (for the bride and groom and as a news photog), in hurricanes, blizzards, war zones, dozens of riots, countless baseball and football games (in New England, so lots of sports in down pours, ice storms and blizzards), etc etc etc. ....and a rain storm in Florida is probably a lighter rain than having your own gear in Puerto Rico while covering a hurricane (which ripped the roof off the aircraft hanger I was using for shelter)" 
Like all these other ridiculous situations he describes, we challenge Frischling to present photographic evidence that it ever occurred. Where are his hurricane photos? He even claims "at least I got some nice photos." Surely he is not so unprofessional that he "lost" all his photos. So where are they? Why are they not on his own website?

Happy Lying!

5 comments:

  1. ok, so let me get this straight. he was on an assignment, or so he claims to have been in this quote here -

    "I have decided that if I have no garuntee way to get what is my intended assignment to head back to NY tomorrow morning. I believe this assignment to no longer be in my best interest for economic and time reasons."

    but decides that he is just going to ditch the assignment because now it is not in his best interest. I know that when I am on an assignment, I am actually getting paid regardless of how much waiting is involved. most editors understand that dealings with the military and other government agencies are not always smooth so it is expected that there will be delays. and, if you are traveling on a real assignment (not some made up fantasy) the client pays for every day that you are on the road.

    but, since frischling probably had very few actual assignments during his "career", I guess he wouldn't know that.

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  2. Another good catch from a real photographer. These things go right above our heads!

    Why does he first claim FEMA contacted him randomly, and then he is referring to it as an "assignment." Pardon our ignorance, but wouldn't an assignment require someone doing the assigning?

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  3. if it was an actual assignment, an editor would have made the arrangements with FEMA and then assigned the photographer. if it was a travel assignment, the photographer typically gets paid a day rate plus expenses. this was clearly not an actual assignment.

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  4. The only "assignment" he needs is the one to a mental institution. No human can have so much failure and still stand up, walk and talk/mumble without medical help.

    We laugh about this, but maybe he's seriously in need of healthcare. That empty head must be hurting.

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  5. ^That's certainly a possibility we've considered. In fact, we've informed his "wife" that we would reconsider this blog if she could indeed confirm he has a mental disorder or documented low intelligence. She would not. We're not cruel at the FishFraud blog and it's not our intention to belittle retarded or mentally ill people. She brags she works in the mental health field so surely if he needed psychiatric assistance, she would insist he receive it?

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