What CNN鈥檚 drone agreement with the FAA means
It鈥檚 another mark of the growing interest in drones and their potential: The Federal Aviation Administration has allowed CNN, in partnership with the Georgia Tech Research Institute, .
"Our aim is to get beyond hobby-grade equipment and to establish what options are available and workable to produce high quality video journalism," said David Vigilante, CNN's senior vice president of legal.
The agreement, announced Monday, is a step towards progress. But don鈥檛 expect CNN drone footage to be airing anytime soon.
Current FAA regulations prohibit the use of drones for commercial purposes, which include journalism. Any business that wants to use unmanned aircraft must file for an exemption.
Governmental operations, which include state and public universities, may apply for a to operate drones for specific purposes, such as research. Partnering with Georgia Tech simply allowed CNN to apply for a COA. 聽
鈥淚t鈥檚 a pretty incremental step,鈥� said , journalism professor and founder of the at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Waite himself is currently applying for a COA for his lab, a process that he says demonstrates the FAA鈥檚 slow rollout of drone regulations.
The use of drones comes with a tangle of privacy and safety issues. Over the last year, some US residents have complained to authorities about drones flying over their properties. The reports highlight the growing concern among private citizens about how this technology might change the nature of surveillance and invade their privacy聽鈥� though experts say legislation against spying already exists and that drones would hardly make those laws obsolete.
"We already have laws to address if people are being spied upon," drone attorney Brendan Schulman . "It doesn't seem to me that the technology being used would make a difference."
Safety is another issue: Last May, a drone crashed into an office window in St. Louis. A few months later, another drone nearly collided with a police helicopter in New York. While no one was harmed in either case, the potential for harm is there.
鈥淎lthough drones may only weigh a few pounds, that鈥檚 all birds weigh, and look at what it did to the Sully Airbus,鈥� a police source told the聽聽after the helicopter incident, referring to US Airways pilot Chesley 鈥淪ully鈥� Sullivan, who in 2009 was forced to land a commercial flight on the Hudson River when his plane hit a flock of birds after takeoff.
Between June and November 2014,聽聽in which small drones almost crashed into larger aircraft have been reported to the FAA.
People have the right to expect that anyone controlling a drone would have basic training in safety and flying聽鈥� just like any other pilot, Waite said. But such concerns, he added, will never be put to rest if practical research and testing continues to wait on FAA regulations to be finalized.
鈥淭he current regulatory void has left American entrepreneurs and others either sitting on the sidelines or operating in the absence of appropriate safety guidelines,鈥� read to FAA administrator Michael Huerta, signed April 8, 2014 by 33 groups representing a variety of industries.
In 2012, Congress gave the FAA a September 2015 deadline to develop a set of commercial drone regulations, but showed that the agency was behind schedule. It remains unclear when the FAA will complete its task.
Despite what he calls a 鈥渞egulatory kerfuffle,鈥� Waite has high hopes for the future of drones in research and industry 鈥� and in journalism. He points to the the work of Ben Kreimer, technologist and Drone Journalism Lab associate: In collaborating with VICE News on a story about a huge dump site in Nairobi, Kreimer was able to build .
鈥淭he real future of drone journalism lies in using them for data journalism, investigative journalism, accountability journalism,鈥� Waite said. 鈥淏asically, if journalists can get into the air with very little expense 鈥� what that opens up is massive.鈥�
