True crime YouTubers Robert and Emma Forney are facing legal action from Burning Man organizers after they released a controversial documentary about the festival’s cleanup process. The father-daughter duo run the popular YouTube channel Explore With Us, which has nearly 7 million subscribers. They filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Nevada, claiming their constitutional rights were violated when they were stopped from filming at the Black Rock Desert site.
The Forneys posted a nearly two-hour documentary in August titled What Burning Man Doesn’t Want You to See. The video showed trash and debris left behind after the 2024 festival. It has gained over 670,000 views across Facebook and YouTube. The documentary challenges Burning Man’s reputation as the world’s largest “leave no trace” event. According to their lawsuit, obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the filmmakers were given a trespass warning by local deputies and Bureau of Land Management officers while trying to document the cleanup work in September 2024.
The channel said on social media that some people were “threatening false copyright reports” to try to take the video down. They wrote that “misusing copyright law to silence coverage doesn’t just fail, it exposes exactly what they don’t want the public to see.” The lawsuit also claims that people connected to the festival “aggressively accosted them and threatened them” while they were trying to film.
Burning Man faces questions as legal battle develops
The legal case focuses on whether the Forneys could legally be removed from public land where Burning Man operates under a permit from the Bureau of Land Management. The lawsuit admits that Burning Man had a valid permit to close the specific area from July 25 to October 1, 2024. However, it claims the permit was “orally and retroactively” extended without telling the public. This isn’t the first time the festival has faced controversy over allegations, though earlier incidents involved different situations.
Maggie McLetchie is the attorney representing EWU Media. She argued that “a private group should not be in charge of who can access information about that group’s use of land that belongs to all of us.” She also said that “law enforcement should not take orders from the ‘Black Rock Rangers’, Burning Man’s imaginary law enforcement agency.”
Burning Man organizers have firmly rejected the claims. Festival spokesperson Dominique Debucquoy-Dodley said that “Burning Man views the complaint as frivolous, without legal or substantive merit, and will vigorously defend the claims against it and take all appropriate legal action against EWU Media LLC in response.” The situation is similar to other major legal disputes involving content creators who have faced pushback over their reporting.
The lawsuit names several defendants, including the Burning Man Project, Black Rock City LLC, the BLM, Pershing County, and several individual officials. This controversy adds to the problems facing the 2025 festival, which has struggled with unsold tickets and ongoing money troubles that need a $20 million fundraising campaign to fix.
