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 …