The Australian man who sent a drone to pick up a hot dog, then return it to him in his backyard hot tub, is in trouble with the law.
The BBC reports that the aerial meat journey breached local drone flight safety rules.
“Tim,” as he is anonymously known, reports that the hot dog was “freezing” anyway by the time it got to him.
There’s something a bit fishy about it. It’s all sourced to “YouTube video”, but the BBC heavily edited and rehosted the video and doesn’t link to either YouTube or the original story at The Age. It doesn’t even name it, instead calling it “local media”. Go looking for it, and the only thing on YouTube seems to be a ripped and reuploaded version of a professionally-produced ad for a hot dog shop that isn’t on YouTube.
There’s an interesting ethical question for you: if something viral is newsworthy (Man Fined Over Hot Tub Hot Dog), but not newsworthy enough to do any real work reporting out whether it’s a marketing stunt or not, how clever can you be in removing non-newsworthy elements that might be The Marketing Part?
After all, you might get it wrong. You know, like that thing where I carefully avoid using the word “GoPro” when posting that “GoPro footage of Badgers Skydiving” video, but fail to notice that all the badgers are wearing North Face.