Death Knell Of Freedom Of The Press?

Is our freedom of the press being forceably suppressed by armed troops? Is the First Amendment under attack by an incompetent and confused government?

From Operation Flashlight, a blogger on the outskirts of New Orleans:

[link] We are in Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans. At the National Guard checkpoint, they are under orders to turn away all media. All of the reporters are turning they’re TV trucks around.

Things are so bad, Bush is now censoring all reporting from NOLA. The First Amendment sank with the city.

From Brian Williams at MSNBC:

[link] While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

All I know is that under Martial law, these types of things are bound to happen. It seems like it's a staggeringly bad case of "too much, too late". The government appears to be trying to offset accusations of late and light response with heavy-handed tactics.

I hope that this doesn't become a precedent that gets used in the future for less dire situations.

What are your thoughts?