Editorial: Denying professional drone use defies logic

You see what they see at the scenes of fires, amid the devastation of tornadoes and other natural disasters. You hear them buzzing overhead at weddings.

Drone aircraft - not the weaponized ones used for military strikes, but the ones that look like four-propellered miniature helicopters - are the latest big kid toy.

From hundreds of feet up and away they add another dimension to journalistic photography because they can go places where photographers can't and capture scenes in a whole new way.

But don't get too used to seeing what they can do, folks.

Drones have been described as the biggest technological disruption in aviation since the advent of the jet engine. So the Federal Aviation Administration has been grappling with how to regulate them. Drones have the worst-case-scenario potential to run afoul of real airplanes, fall out of the sky and cause accidents or injuries.

But in the hands of people with training, integrity and insurance, they could show you the world in ways that news organizations have not been able to do with any regularity.

In a May 5 memorandum to the FAA's manager of the Unmanned Aircraft Integration Office, attorneys lay out just who can use drones, when and why.

Their reasoning is not only an affront to the First Amendment but to rational thought.

It splits users into two camps: hobbyists and commercial ventures.

"Because the use of an unmanned aircraft by a media entity to gather news would be in furtherance of that entity's business, the operations would fail the 'hobby or recreation' test,'" the memo reads.

So the news media would have to get FAA approval each time it wanted to put a drone in the air, which rules out breaking news.

The Daily Herald in recent weeks has posted video of crews battling a fire at a Barrington Hills mansion and also the devastation in Fairdale after the tornado. Both were shot by freelancers - one gave it to us, the other charged us.

"A person who wishes to operate a (drone) to take pictures or videos or gather other information that then would be sold to media outlets would need an FAA authorization for the operation," the memo continues.

So even most freelancers are shut out.

Why would the FAA deny a professional access to the skies specifically because he could profit from the video when pros have a stronger impetus to fly them safely? It defies logic.

If the FAA feels the need to regulate drones - and we understand the need to create some safeguards to reduce accidents and protect privacy - shouldn't it give the benefit of the doubt to news organizations that have a vested interest in ensuring that its operators are properly trained, properly insured, use them for specific journalistic purposes and follow a code of ethics?

The world can benefit from enhanced storytelling techniques more than it can from videos of ATV stunts on YouTube.