Why Covering Emergencies Got Trickier

At a time when technology is enabling broadcasters to expand their coverage -- and across multiple platforms -- it also is giving rise to a plethora of new safety concerns, even for people who never leave the newsroom. “We are now dealing with folks out there who have agendas and know how to hack, how to use their own tools for propaganda and for shutting down systems,” said Marvin Danielski, president -GM of KDSK, the Gannett-owned NBC affiliate in St. Louis (MO). “Security is a much bigger issue than people recognize,” he says, adding that the new threats posed by technology emerged during his stations’ coverage of the turmoil in 2014 in Ferguson (MO).

Not only were journalists, as well as the computer systems they rely on, the subjects of online threats, but the multitude of individuals equipped with some of the same equipment journalists now use -- smartphones and the like -- makes it particularly difficult for reporters to do their jobs when it matters most. “It’s hard to tell who are the traditional media, who are the people out there agitating and who are the people you can trust,” he says. “An iPhone in the hands of a traditional journalism is very different from an iPhone in the hands of someone with a different agenda of what they want to cover.”