When The Media Has a New Toy - News Helicopters Don’t Always Fly With Neighborhoods

In a giant step toward "cosmopolitan" reporting, two of Jacksonville’s local Television News Stations have recently purchased helicopters to bolster their reporting.  For most large cities having Television News Helicopters isn’t a novelty, but for Jacksonville it seems to be big deal.   Local news is proudly sending their choppers airborne to cover the most benign of stories, from lost dogs to traffic jams to continuous coverage of the unchanging crime scene of a waning homicide story at The Beaches.

Earlier this week Action News and News4Jax both sent their dueling news-birds to hover incessantly over Seagate Avenue in Neptune Beach, Florida and it wasn’t to cover a high speed chase or daring bank robbery.  No, it was to provide a live feed, both on Facebook and Television, of a shallow grave behind a house where a grandmother was killed by her grandson one week earlier.   Grant it, the story is an unusual one for the sleepy First Coast Beaches, but breaking news this was not – instead it was salacious coverage highlight both news channels latest toys.

Whether or not Jacksonville’s media needs aerial coverage of the First Coast is up for debate – after all for decades the news moved along just fine without a flying fleet of reporters.  Call it progress, but this week’s high flying stunt to broadcast a shallow grave from 500 feet was distasteful, disrespectful and rude.   Just because local media has helicopters and can legally float overhead, news dispatchers need to examine when and how they use their newfound eyes in the skies – covering an active crime scene and grave is not their best use of this tool.