During the week of Burning Man 2005, members of the Black Rock City Community Collective tried to initiate contact with the Discovery Crew, going first to Media Mecca in an effort to locate them. Since all video cameras are required to be tagged at the event, an enquiry was made as to the camera tag number. The volunteer at Media Mecca either feigned ignorance or did not actually know the answer. This is disturbing. If they did not know what Discovery Channel's tag number was, how would they be able to take any actions against them in the event that complaint was filed?

Finally, after more stonewalling, we were introduced to the Discovery Crew, who became immediately defensive and wanted to know what the camera tag number was wanted for. It was explained that it was necessary to identify the crew so that members of the Community could make an informed decision with regards to consent to be filmed.

Only then did the Discovery crew come forward, introducing themselves individually, including Charlie LeDuff, the host of the show. Ironically, hanging out in Media Mecca is Discovery's idea of "participation" at Burning Man. As it turned out, they were waiting for the "B crew" to get back from filming cut-away shots. Unfortunately they didn't know what their camera tag number was either!

After this encounter, arrangements were made to put on a panel discussion at Center Camp on Sunday, September 4th at 3:00 p.m. Numerous invitations were hand-written and personally delivered to members of BMorg at First Camp and the Discovery Channel film crew to participate in this public discussion.

On Sunday, with about a half hour to go before the scheduled stage time, we found Action Girl at Media Mecca, who listened to our complaints, but declined to take part in the public discussion. She seemed mystified why the Discovery Channel was targeted and not ABC's hour long featured piece (for yet another cheesy magazine format that is slickly packaged for mass consumption). It really is tragic that Action Girl seemed so clueless as to why the Community is upset by these actions.

In the end (and somewhat as expected) nobody from either side attended the panel discussion. Both BMorg's and the Discovery Team's conspicuous absence served as a golden opportunity to make a Public Service Announcement instead of the originally planned discussion. The announcement was short but sweet, and was met with a great deal of booing and hissing from the Center Camp audience. The discussion continued off-stage for about 15 minutes.