The restricted 37-mile radius above Ferguson that was approved by the U.S. government for "safety" reasons turned out to be a plan by police to keep reporters from covering the August protests, according to an Associated Press report.
"They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out," said one Federal Aviation Administration manager about the St. Louis County Police in a series of recorded telephone conversations obtained by The Associated Press. "But they were a little concerned of, obviously, anything else that could be going on."
During the conversation, the FAA manager also said police "did not care if you ran commercial traffic through this TFR (temporary flight restriction) all day long. They didn't want media in there."
The recordings were obtained by AP through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
By going through these measures to keep out the reporters from covering the happenings of the protests on the streets where a St. Louis police officer killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in a controversial racial profiling case less than three months ago.
"Any evidence that a no-fly zone was put in place as a pretext to exclude the media from covering events in Ferguson is extraordinarily troubling and a blatant violation of the press's First Amendment rights," Lee Rowland, an American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney specializing in First Amendment issues, told AP.
When St. Louis police were trying to get airspace restricted for reporters, it put up a red flag for FAA officials. From the phone recordings, the FAA appears to have known the restrictions weren't only for safety, but the FAA approved the regulations anyway.
"So are (the police) protecting aircraft from small-arms fire or something?" one FAA official at the agency's command center asked the Kansas City manager in charge, attempting to determine whether the restrictions were really about safety. "Or do they think they're just going to keep the press out of there, which they can't do."