Droning On

Will drones remain the bane of the US? Or will journalism save the day?

WrittenBy:Arunabh Saikia
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The Coeur D’Alene Lake located in Idaho, USA is known for the Bald Eagles which it attracts owing to the salmons it is home to. Picturesque and idyllic for most of the year, the lake comes to life on the first day of every year. The lake – on January 1 of every year – serves as the venue for the annual Polar Bear Plunge. An event where people jump into the freezing lake.

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The event – held in this relatively obscure northwestern state, known mostly for its potatoes – has hardly the popularity or importance to make headlines in major publications and channels. This year, though, the Polar Bear Plunge seems to have triggered off a riveting debate which many journalists and editors across the globe are keenly following.

It began when the Spokesman Review – a daily based out of Spokane in Washington – published a minute-long, aerial video of the event. Jesse Tinsley, the photographer, had used an “unmanned camera ship” to record the video from 30 feet off the ground. Incidentally, an “unmanned camera ship” which is aerial qualifies to be an “unnamed aerial vehicle” – a nicer and innocuous term for what is essentially a “drone”. Now, drones are a subject most Americans are very touchy about and when Spokesman Review released the video online, apprehensions about the legality of the video started flying thick and fast on Twitter.

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Tinsley responded to the concerns.

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The national aviation authority, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) seemingly had a more monochromatic view of the matter. The FAA which is responsible for all civil aviation regulations in the country soon released a statement completely contradicting Tinsley’s claim.

In a mild, but firmly worded, statement on January 6, 2014, FAA spokesperson Les Dorr said: “There is no gray area. Hobbyists are allowed to use small, radio-controlled crafts under specific guidelines, but if you’re using it for any sort of commercial purposes, including journalism, that’s not allowed. It’s an attractive technology for journalists, and people would like to be able to use it. That said, the FAA is responsible for the safety of the air space. And as much as we’d like to encourage them, we can’t let them do it as long as there are no rules in place”.

 As Dorr said in his statement, there are indeed no specific rules on the use of drones for journalistic practices. And in the absence of any concrete guidelines, there has often been confusion over what qualifies as “commercialpurposes”.  The journalism faculties at University of Missuorie and University of Nebraska were served cease-and-desist letters from the FAA in July 2013, asking them to refrain from training students on how to use drones to report news.

Reacting to the ban, Matt Waite, a journalism professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Drone Journalism Lab had then said that the drone lab “wrongly believed that we could fly under hobbyist rules because we weren’t doing any research and development into drones, and there was no commercial interest in what we were doing”.

There is, however, a growing dissent in the US against the FAA’s ban on unmanned flying objects in the absence of a legal framework. Brendan Schulman, an attorney at Kramer Levin Naftalis and Frankel and a drone enthusiast was quoted by the SF Gate to have said that that no US regulation specifically addresses commercial drone use and that the agency has merely stated the commercial drone ban as federal policy – one not subject to a prior rule-making process. In the same report, Schulman questions the FAA’s jurisdiction over airspace under-500 feet – which is the zone where drones used for journalistic purposes normally operate.

The FAA appears to be rather resolute in its intent to implement the ban. In October 2011, one Raphael Pirker, a video-drone photographer was slapped a fine of $10,000 for operating a drone “in a careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another”.

In spite of the FAA ban, the easy online availability of remote-controlled aerial devices which can be used to take photos and videos has resulted in the growth of drone photography. Photos and videos shot through such equipment often find their way  – at a lot of times unwittingly – to commercial websites.

While FAA’s concerns regarding public safety are legitimate, it’s quite evident that drone journalism is here to stay. In fact, it is increasingly emerging as a strong journalistic tool  – one that could go a long way in telling stories of great public interest. The FAA is expected to come up with a new set of rules in 2015 to govern the usage of drones. This could well be the US government’s grand opportunity to redeem itself of all the notoriety of its armed drone program – or at least divert attention from it.

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