CNN and Georgia Tech Research Institute Drones for Journalism - US Journalism awaits FAA Ruling

“Our aim is to get beyond hobby-grade equipment and to establish what options are available and workable to produce high quality video journalism using various types of UAVs and camera setups.Our hope is that these efforts contribute to the development of a vibrant ecosystem where operators of various types and sizes can safely operate in the US airspace.”

CNN Senior Vice President David Vigilante, commenting on CNN's arrangement with the FAA to test Drones for usage in Journalism

It’s now official. CNN (Cable News Network) is taking one Giant leap for Journalist-kind!

They’ve been recently been given permission to start testing Drones for the purpose of News Reporting as declared in the article “CNN cleared to test drones for reporting”, published January 12, 2015: 1:29 PM ET By David Goldman, CNN Money and “CNN and FAA sign research deal to bring drones into news reporting”, published January 12, 2015 01:24 pm  by Chris Welch, The Verge.

In a CNN Press Room Release on their blog, CNN announced that the testing of Drones for use in Journalism was being done in collaboration with GTRI (Georgia Tech Research Institute).

The permission give to them by the FAA is in a manner similar to the ok given to BP (British Petroleum) to use a Drone made by Drone maker AeroVironment to fly unmanned Drones over the Prudhoe Bay in Alaska as reported in my blog article entitled “FAA ok’s Drones for Hobbyist – Study to determine Commercial Drone Risk as Amazon, UPS and FedEx Drones get the Kibosh until 2015”

CNN and Georgia Tech Research Institute Drones for Journalism - FAA slow with Drone Regulations

Aside from this, the FAA is widely expected to announce guidelines later in 2015 after research is completed in conjunction with various Universities to create guidelines for the Safety and Design of Drones as stated in my blog article entitled “FAA ok’s Drones for Hobbyist – Study to determine Commercial Drone Risk as Amazon, UPS and FedEx Drones get the Kibosh until 2015”.

That potentially means jobs for Drone pilots paying as much as US$50 per hour or US$100,000 per year as predicted in my blog article entitled “FAA to allow Commercial Drones in 2015 - US$100,000 per year for 100,000 Drone Pilot jobs for the next five years”.

By comparison, Jamaica has very lax regulations on the use of Drones as evidenced by the operation of SkyCam Jamaica and the guidelines that they have to follow as laid out in my Geezam blog article entitled “SkyCam Jamaica Aerial Photography marks possible revival of Package Delivery in the Jamaica Postal Service”.

In fact, the Jamaica Gleaner recently used their own Drone for footage on the Outameni Property with no complaints from anyone, as shown above.

Drones in US Journalism - First to use Drones while USA waits on the FAA

Currently, you can only fly Drones on a contractual basis as per the ruling from the Raphael Pirker aka “Trappy”vs FAA in which NTSB Judge Patrick Geraghty gave him the thumbs up as noted in my blog article entitled “NTSB Judge Patrick Geraghty rules Drones for commercial purposes are now free - Forward thinking Black Sheep founder Raphael Pirker leading America towards an Almost Human Future”.

Still, this latest development doesn’t mean that you'll start seeing Drone footage from CNN just yet from the West Bank in Israel or shots of the White House from up above. Rather, it's aimed at creating the very same guidelines for the Safety and Design of Drones but specifically tailored for Journalism in the US of A. 

Conceivably, once this testing and Research is finished, a specific framework for Drone usage by Journalism interests will be in place, albeit News Organizations have been using Drones to cover stories for some time now as noted in the article “The FAA Will Permit Drones for Journalism, Starting With CNN”, published Monday 3:30pm by Darren Orf, Gizmodo.

Then other News Organizations, be they Newspapers, Television Station, Cable Providers, Radio stations and even Independent News i.e. Bloggers, may be able to apply for a license to operate and own a Drone for the purpose of filming Video.