Law Commons^™

Newsgathering Takes Flight In Choppy Skies: Legal Obstacles Affecting Journalistic Drone Use, Clay Calvert, Charles D. Tobin, Matthew D. Bunker

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article examines legal challenges confronting journalists who use drones to gather images. Initially, it traces the history of drones and the Federal Aviation Administration’s efforts to regulate them, as well as new state legislation that aims to restrict drones. This Article then illustrates that a wide array of legal remedies already exist for individuals harmed by journalistic drone usage, and it argues that calls for additional, piecemeal state laws to regulate drones are unnecessary and unduly hinder First Amendment interests in newsgathering and the public’s right to know. Furthermore, this Article asserts that the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy jurisprudence developed in aerial …

Protecting The Public From Itself: Paternalism And Irony In Defining Newsworthiness, Clay Calvert

UF Law Faculty Publications

In a speech more than 150 years ago, author and British politician Benjamin Disraeli' proclaimed it "much easier to be critical than to be correct." Viewed in that sagacious light, this article surely traverses the low road, not the high one. It offers, in discussion-sparking spirit, a few slight criticisms of Professor Amy Gajda's conclusions and suggestions in her timely, meticulously researched and example-laden book, The First Amendment Bubble: How Privacy and Paparazzi Threaten a Free Press.

Specifically, Part I of this Article encapsulates the problems identified by Professor Gajda for journalism today - and, more broadly, troubles for a …

Prying, Spying, And Lying: Intrusive Newsgathering And What The Law Should Do About It, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

The media's use of intrusive newsgathering techniques poses an increasing threat to individual privacy. Courts currently resolve the overwhelming majority of conflicts in favor of the media. This is not because the First Amendment bars the imposition of tort liability on the media for its newsgathering practices. It does not. Rather, tort law has failed to seize the opportunity to create meaninful privacy protection. After surveying the economic, philosophical, and practical obstacles to reform, this Article proposes to rejuvenate the tort of intrusion to tip the balance between privacy and the press back in privacy's direction. Working within the framework …

Intrusion And The Investigative Reporter, Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

In an award-winning series of Houston Chronicle articles, reporter Nancy Stancill uncovered shocking conditions in Texas nursing homes. 7 However, reforms were not implemented until 20/20, following Stancill's lead, conducted a three-month, undercover investigation of the treatment of elderly residents at Texas state and private nursing home facilities.

By employing subterfuge to gather news, the 20/20 reporters enhanced the immediacy and credibility of the resulting story. As one journalist argued, "[Jiust describing the conditions wouldn't have cut it. They had to be seen."

Using the 20/20 case as a paradigm, this Note argues that, in order to distinguish protected newsgathering …