Pens, notebooks, computers and, now, drones?
The unmanned aerial vehicles may soon become a critical part of the reporter’s arsenal of tools, if a fascinating experiment by a curious journalism instructor proves successful.
Bill Allen, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri is using his classroom as a laboratory to explore the potential upside of using drones for journalistic purposes.
His class, called Science Investigative Reporting/Drone Journalism, is in its inaugural semester as part of the new University of Missouri Drone Journalism Program.
“Our vision is to help lead the journalism profession responsibly and innovatively into a new frontier of public service news coverage using this new technology,” Allen said. “We think drones, if used right, have potential to help journalists perform their news-gathering and watchdog duties in our democracy.”
In the class, students operate drones, or “J-bots,” as they call them, weighing only a few pounds each, as tools to help with reporting. The “J-bots” are about the size of a basketball and each has foot-long legs, small motors with propellers and is equipped with a high-quality lightweight GoPro camera.
The class has so far used the camera-equipped drones to report an array of stories about prairie conservation, a hot environmental topic in the Midwest.
But the small robot aircraft, operated from remote control on the ground, could eventually help reporters snap aerial shots of everything from roped-off crime scenes to wildfires, and other natural disasters, where it would be hazardous or impossible for a reporter to enter, Allen explained.
“I think the kinds of stories that could really be augmented with this technology really focus on environmental stories. Like prairie burns and farming issues, which are big in the Midwest, but even bigger things like flying over public streams and waterways to look for pollution. And monitoring creeks and public lands and national forests that may be in the process of being destroyed,” he said.
Allen, along with program director Scott Pham and IT-expert Matthew Dickinson, purchased the drones online at various hobby sites.
“You can buy the parts to put together one or you can just buy one yourself,’ Allen explained. Each one costs about $500, he said, but the cost rises to about $1,000 when the price of a durable GoPro camera is factored in.
At such a low price, the machines could present low-budget newsrooms and cash-strapped media outlets with the option to have their own unmanned “news-copters” to monitor and report on traffic accidents and environmental stories.
The experiment isn’t without potential downsides, however. Already, critics have raised issues of privacy and whether journalists might use similar craft to score in-demand celebrity photos by flying the machines over houses of the rich and famous.
“The paparazzi drone journalism threat is a legitimate concern. Not just of mine but of a lot of people,” Allen said. “You can think of case after case where this tool would be really useful, but you can think of case after case where it would go over the line as well. I’m worried about privacy just like anybody else.”
Those potential threats have privacy advocates across the country worried. A series of provocative hearings held this week by the Senate Judiciary Committee on the future of drone use in the U.S., appear to have made a drone-wary public even warier.
More than 33 states are already considering laws that would restrict the use of drones in their airspace, according to NBC News.
But over the duration of the class, Allen said, students will not only learn how to use new technologies in their reporting, but how to use them responsibly, so that when they become professional journalists, they’ll understand what’s ethical and what isn’t.
“Our code here is to be ethical and responsible. It does not include breaking the law and breaking. It doesn’t mean we won’t go hard on stories, it just means we’re not going to fly over people’s homes to spy on them,” he said.