When Journalism Becomes a Game of Drones

BY SCOTT PHAM2 hours ago

In just five years from now, 7,500 licensed unmanned aircrafts — commonly known as drones — will fly the skies above United States soil. By 2030, there will be 30,000.

However, these numbers are conservative. At this very moment, the popular drone hobbyist community DIY Drones boasts 40,000 members. Drones are not the technology of some unknown future. They are a fact of our lives.

That is why, when I received a request to attend a state legislative hearing for a bill to virtually ban all drone flight in the state, the whole thing felt a little ridiculous.

My colleagues and I started the Missouri Drone Journalism Program late last year to figure out if and how journalists could tell compelling stories with these small, unmanned flying vehicles.

We were by no means the first to consider using drones for journalistic purposes; I drew inspiration from forerunners like Matthew Waite at the University of Nebraska, who established one of the very first programs for investigating the use of these battery-powered aircrafts in journalism.

While the willingness to tread new waters in news coverage was admirable, the early efforts were missing an essential element: content. And isn't that the whole point?

The most obvious journalistic use for drones is to cover events that pose extreme obstacles — public protests, crime and natural disasters — for photojournalists on land. But documenting those kinds of phenomena requires advanced technology and skills that we could not develop in a short period of time. Moreover, it’s nearly impossible to cover most of those stories under current FAA regulations.

Instead, my program focused on stories around agriculture and the environment on public lands. The footage might not be epic, but it was feasible to capture, and it was the best defense against the skeptics. 

Prove these machines can be used for good, and the public's doubts would subside ... or so I thought.

Prove these machines can be used for good, and the public's doubts would subside ... or so I thought.

I deeply underestimated the skeptics. The trouble started early, when we were getting attention from blogs and newspapers. After an interview, one television reporter alerted us to something we missed: The Missouri General Assembly was considering a bill that would ban the use of drones by most people.

Like a lot of legislation in the Midwest, Missouri House Bill 46 started as a reaction to a misunderstood piece of news. (That year, Missouri would also try to outlaw the United Nation’s “Agenda 21.”)

Rumors had been circling conservative blogs that the EPA was using drones to spy on feedlots in Nebraska. (For the record, those claims have been thoroughly debunked.) In response, Republican Representative Casey Guernsey crafted a bill that would prevent just about anyone but police from using drones.

It’s easy to imagine the reporter’s glee when he had the opportunity to be the very first person totell the Representative about my program.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Guernsey in the interview. “That's enormously disturbing.”

Guernsey’s staff asked me to attend an early hearing at the General Assembly’s Agri-Business committee, which Guernsey happened to chair. I watched as the Representative — a young, slim man just a few years older than myself — went through the procedures of opening the hearing. He then awkwardly walked around the legislator’s seating to the other side of the room where he sat at a desk and explained his support for HB 46.

I was shocked to hear him actually recount the rumors of the EPA drones. When one of the few Democrats on the committee pressed him on whether he was certain the EPA was using drones, Guernsey only offered, “It was all anyone was talking about back home.”

As I watched what was happening before me, I couldn't help but feel angry. On one level, there’s the simple frustration anyone has when someone else interferes with your plans. But it’s quite another thing to get caught up in one man’s misinformed battle with the federal government.

The fact that drones are controversial is clear, but I had hoped people would recognize public radio as one of least threatening organizations that could wield the technology.

My program found itself at the crossroads of a number of disturbing movements coursing through statehouses around the country.

First, when scandals around slaughterhouses and feedlots appeared, lawmakers aligned with the agricultural industry passed laws protecting livestock operations from scrutiny. These “ag-gag laws," or anti-whistleblower laws, typically banned photography within livestock operations — a restriction that Missouri would simply extend to the sky.

The other movement sweeping up the program was the growing anti-drone sentiment among state governments nationwide. Conservative lawmakers teamed up with the ACLU in legislatures all over the country. By summer, six states successfully passed anti-drone laws. Twenty eight states (including Missouri) still have anti-drone laws active in statehouses.

One irony of this whole mess is that agriculture stands to become one of the main beneficiaries of domestic drone development. Work in Oregon is already underway to develop drone technology to detect the spread of pests. And by all accounts, drones are posed to play a major role in the development of precision agriculture in which infrared imagery help farmers apply fertilizers and pesticides more efficiently.

As the hearing drew to a close I finally met with Rep. Guernsey, the bill’s author and sole sponsor. I found him attentive and accessible, but it was hard to call our interaction a true line of communication. The two of us together, shaking hands, became an instant spectacle in the hearing room. Newspaper reporters and television crews surrounded us and mics were thrust in our faces.

Pham speaks with Rep. Casey Guernsey at an early hearing for HB 46 on Feb. 5, 2013. Image: Jaime Cooke

I tried to assure the Representative that legal, ethical journalism was possible, even from the sky.

I tried to assure the Representative that legal, ethical journalism was possible, even from the sky.

I naively suggested that he visit the university sometime to see what we were up to. "We could teach you how to fly," I said. The Representative smiled and told me that was a fine idea. While the cameras rolled, we shook hands, smiled and made vague plans to meet again soon.

It was the last time we spoke.

Congress has directed the FAA to open up the skies to commercial drones by 2015. When that happens, all our hemming and hawing about whether we should or shouldn't be flying drones in the United States is going to feel a little silly.

Drones will soon shake up industries like agriculture, security, broadcast, print and online journalism — and who knows what else. All of that is less than two years away. The drone industry is ready, but our public conversation is still so primitive.

Matthew Waite and others tackled this question beautifully at a recent Slate event. One of the main takeaways there was, “Don’t try to label the technology as good or bad.” This is the starting point of a meaningful discussion about how to integrate drones into society. It seems obvious enough, but to get there, we’ll have to navigate through misinformation, scared and powerful industries and a shifting public conversation about privacy.

It’s all about as hard as it sounds.