No. As someone who works in documentaries, you absolutely have to license footage of public figures, including news footage. There’s a reason most news media shoot their own footage.

If you are commentating on it and making significant changes, then it can be fair use.

Is that why reaction videos get away with playing a whole clip? I have always wondered about that.

> How do you think any news media functions?

Why do you think all of the media responses to viral things on twitter are "Hey, I'm X from Y News Corp; can we use your footage"?

If it was fair use they wouldn't bother to ask.

The public figure can't copyright their appearance, but whoever recorded the clip absolutely has a copyright on it.

The funniest thing about copyright issues is that whenever they come up, people are so confidently wrong about the actual law. Lots of stuff on YouTube is only permitted because the rightsholders allow it to stay up - every cover of every modern song, for example.

> Lots of stuff on YouTube is only permitted because the rightsholders allow it to stay up - every cover of every modern song, for example.

And many of those rights-holders only allow it because YouTube built a mechanism that helps them detect these uses and then automatically siphon off ad revenue it generates.