By Marisa Guthrie
Broadcasting & Cable
Published 8/6/2007
Excerpt:
Smith has 37 years of flying experience under his belt, beginning with two tours in Vietnam. In New York's densely populated metropolitan area, the No. 1 television market in the country, the pilot-reporter is unofficially verboten. (Several New York stations—including WNBC, WABC and WPIX—have lease agreements with Helicopters Inc., which operates more than 70 helicopters in 28 cities.)
Welk is one of the few pilot-reporters in Los Angeles, the car-chase capital of America. He has been flying in the No. 2 market for 11 years. “People have this perception that flying and talking at the same time are somehow competing with each other,” he says. “While there can be a distraction in any phase of a flight, I will stop reporting to concentrate on flying the aircraft, to communicate with other aircraft or to talk to the tower. I never get so wrapped up in watching the car that I forget about the flight.”
It's one thing for a pilot to talk about the 3-mile backup on the Interstate, say critics; it's another to deliver live play-by-play on a fast-moving car chase. “It's go go go go on the part of the producers and news directors,” says Bob Steele, a former television news director and senior member of the journalism ethics faculty at The Poynter Institute. “And that can prompt the folks in the field and up in the air to take unnecessary risks.”
NBC affiliate KPNX, one of the five stations whose news helicopters were in the air at the time of the tragedy, does not use a pilot-reporter. “In Phoenix, we are most comfortable with having a reporter/photojournalist report and acquire the video,” says John Misner, president/general manager of KPNX. “I think every station has to make their own decision about that.”
After electronic-newsgathering (ENG) helicopters are cleared by air-traffic controllers to enter controlled airspace, the onus is on pilots to “maintain visual separation,” which they do in part by communicating on a dedicated frequency. In FAA parlance, that's called “see and avoid.”
