Everyone is worried about drones until a private company gets special permission to fly them over individuals and cars in Boston
Having happily brought up the rear in the Mass press for longer than some of the temp slaves in our region’s post-paywall media mudpuddle have been speaking full sentences, I am acclimated to an ecosystem in which my work and that of my peers and colleagues is largely ignored or disregarded. I concede there have been hundreds of exceptions in which editors or TV news producers had no choice but to give credit, but as for those who recycle our scoops and pretend that we don’t spend countless hours mining data and filing FOIA requests—I issued a blanket pardon for the lot of ’em ages ago.
As a co-founder of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, I am almost as happy when much larger outlets steal our articles as I am when they link back to our articles. Because while it’s always nice to get recognition, our main purpose is to push stories—which would probably go unreported otherwise—into the world.
The above mentioned objectives considered, we were thrilled to see a recent article of mine, “Drone Contractor Gets ‘Rare’ Permission To Follow Individuals And Vehicles In Boston,” explode in popularity after first being published on HorizonMass on Jan. 27. Thanks to pick up from Politico and Universal Hub, as well as a video we ran to complement the piece on social media, the feature took off and continues to attract more eyeballs every week.
With all of that attention, I was actually surprised that my work wasn’t mentioned in a Feb. 13 Boston.com post on how a private foreign contractor secured unusual permission for “drone operations over people and moving vehicles … over Boston.” As noted, I usually wouldn’t care and definitely don’t need credit for the sake of props. But it would have been helpful to Boston.com readers to link back to HorizonMass—at least it could have informed those looking for more than just a shameless plug amounting to pure propaganda for the contractor in question.
I was fair in my accounting of the situation. My article quoted the Canadian drone manufacturer Draganfly extensively, and recognized a “proof-of-concept, research-and-development drone delivery project” it had previously done for Mass General Brigham Home Hospital. But I also centered the apparent privacy and safety concerns that arise with these sort of unique and unspecified unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications.
Which brings me to another element that’s missing from the Boston.com story—anything that even resembles some reasonable pushback against miniature planes being allowed to tail people around a city. You know, like in basically every dystopian fantasy ever imagined.
This was somewhat of a turnaround for Boston.com, which has covered drones a lot in the past year, but usually much more cynically pushing on fearfully. In December, the Boston Globe-affiliated site jumped on the bandwagon drone-spotting trend sweeping the East Coast, quoting people on X like one North Shore woman who “said she saw more than 25 of the drones flying overhead in Stoneham.” They also ran AP content about New Jersey sightings, and an article about two men who were arrested for flying one near Logan Airport amidst all the madness.
Yet for all that coverage of concern about UAV activity, Boston.com’s cheap facsimile of my Draganfly scoop was a confetti cannon blast and red carpet unrolling for the upcoming hovering fleet. There’s a section that is titled “Safety and privacy concerns,” but the reporter lets the Draganfly CEO swat them away. We’re told, “There’s extensive work done by the entire public safety industry around that. … And so, you know, depending on where you’re flying, who’s flying, why it’s being flown, that type of reason, there’s no cameras on. There’s no recording that happens. There’s no data that’s being saved.”
But by the end of the next paragraph—literally, the next paragraph—the cameras are turned on, along with any other bells and whistles: “… that said, if there’s a law enforcement agency that is on an active scene with an active shooter or something like that, it’s a different ball game altogether.”
It’s all a maddening affront to public trust, but it’s sadly business as usual at fart factories like Boston.com. As hundreds of journalism students at colleges around New England can attest from my guest lectures to their classes through the years, I always use surveillance as an example of something that I tend to cover differently than so-called mainstream outlets. Whereas most writers twist themselves up like fiber optic cables to pet robot dogs and prove to readers how much better everybody’s lives will be made by new and intriguing tech—even if it is something as clearly creepy as a drone over your dome—I take pride in questioning these typically vague and ominous developments.
While Boston.com was treating Draganfly with kid gloves, I was digging deeper and filing public information requests to learn more about what’s going on. I wonder if they’ll keep riding my coattails if something turns up.
