A Florida newspaper that knew ahead of time that a man planned to fly a gyrocopter into restricted airspace at the U.S. Capitol faced questions about whether its editors should have used this knowledge to try and stop the risky stunt.
The Tampa Bay Times, which posted reporter Ben Montgomery in Washington on Wednesday to document postal worker Doug Hughes’ self-styled protest flight that landed on the Capitol grounds, said that its responsibility was to cover, not change, the story. Hughes is charged with operating an unregistered aircraft and violating national airspace.
