News group warns Part 108 could impinge on free speech
By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill
A coalition of almost two dozen major news media organizations has raised concerns that the proposed FAA Part 108 rule could hamper journalists’ efforts to report the news using drones.
In its comment to the FAA’s proposed rule, which would establish a standardized framework for drone operators to conduct regular BVLOS flights, the News Media Coalition (NMC), said the rule as proposed could instead “impede the majority of news organizations from engaging in these operations, which are a mechanism that enables free speech.”
The NMC’s statements were among the more than 3,000 comments the FAA received in response to its notice of proposed rulemaking for the Part 108 rule. The comment period closed on October 6.
In its main objection to the proposed rule, the Coalition said that as currently written the rule would restrict newsgathering BVLOS flights to areas with population densities of Category 3 – areas of moderate population, such as developments and single-family homes — or lower. This would preclude the news media from conducting BVLOS drone flights in urban areas and at the sites of many major disasters involving large groups of people, such as hurricanes or floods.
Such restrictions would “exclude significant geographic regions from BVLOS newsgathering, without regard for whether such regulation is necessary to protect public safety,” the Coalition’s comment states.
The Coalition also objected to a section of the proposed rule that would limit a UAS operator to flying no more than 24 “active” BVLOS-enabled drones. Such a restriction “could impede large media companies with numerous affiliates and freelance journalists, without any indication that such a strict limit will enhance safety.”
In addition, the Coalition called into question the need for newsgathering organizations to file detailed flight plans with the FAA prior to conducting BVLOS operations.
“While the Coalition recognizes that obtaining advanced approval might be feasible for some BVLOS operations, requiring journalists to submit detailed, advanced flight plans would significantly undermine the industry’s ability to gather news,” the group’s comment said. “To state the obvious, the news does not always behave in a predictable format or isolated geographic grid, and journalists must be permitted to react and modify in real time.”
The FAA is under a tight timeline for promulgating a final BVLOS rule. In June, President Trump issued an Executive Order requiring that the FAA finalize the Part 108 rule by early 2026. By law the FAA must review every comment to the proposed rule before issuing a final rule. The review process is likely to be further complicated by the government shutdown, which began on October 1 and which shows no signs of reaching a conclusion any time soon.
Population-density restrictions present a thorny problem for media
In an interview, Charles Tobin, a Washington D.C.-based lawyer with the firm of Ballard Spahr who prepared the Coalition’s comment, said he is especially concerned about the low-population density restrictions that the Part 108 order would impose on newsgathering.
“Journalists cover news where it happens; in crowded areas, in rural areas and in areas in between,” he said. “And so, to limit us essentially to rural areas is to not pay enough attention to an important end-user like the news media, who operate in the public interest.”
Tobin, who has represented the NMC on drone-related issues since 2015, said the news media has had a stellar safety record for safely flying drones in pursuit of the news for the past decade.
“We would like the FAA to take another look at where the news media might be able to operate and not limit us to such a low-density area,” he said. Tobin added that the media’s requirement for operating BVLOS flights are relatively minor compared with some industries that use drones more extensively in their operations.
“We just need to get around that tree or that pole or that obstacle where we don’t have a visual line of sight,” he said. “We’re not talking about generally flying miles away from the operator. We’re talking about extra dozens of yards at most in your typical news-gathering circumstance.”
Tobin also objected to the proposed restriction on the number of drones that a company and its affiliates could operate at one time, saying it doesn’t make sense for large broadcasting networks that might have large numbers of affiliate stations and contractors who are licensed to fly drones, who operate indirectly on behalf of the parent company.
“Can you imagine telling a company that has a hundred television stations, that only one quarter of your stations, even if they’re in very different parts of the country, can fly?” he asked. “It serves no public safety purpose, and it inhibits us from telling the news in our communities in the way that we do.”
He also said getting FAA’s approval of pre-developed flight plans might make sense for other drone-using industries, but not for the news business.
“There are certain news stories that do lend themselves to more of a planning process. But for the most part, journalism is the coverage of news that breaks and when it happens, it is virtually impossible to be able to put together the type of detailed flight planning that the FAA is contemplating,” he said.
He added that the requirement that news operations file flight plans with the FAA could put a crimp in the use of drones in investigative reporting. “A lot of journalism — investigative journalism in particular — only works if the subject of the journalism does not know in advance that you’re going to be operating, that you’re going to be covering them, that you’re going to be watching them,” he said.
Tobin said the NMC has worked within the FAA’s public comment process to try to short-circuit the implementation of a BVLOS rule that could impinge on press freedom.
“We are a First Amendment-protected industry that usually resists government control but we have leaned into the process with the FAA because we recognize that we need to be a safe operator and a good citizen,” he said. “And we hope the FAA takes that into account in revising the rules to give us a much more First Amendment-friendly regime than is being proposed.”
Read more:
Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
