To the corporate media, any use of technology to do something illegal is "hacking". I am sure a jury of 12 would probably see this as hacking.
To the corporate media, anything for communications is a "cell tower" regardless of it being LMR, cellular, WiFi, or broadcast. It's all "cell towers" to them.
Keep in mind, the average American's attention span is reduced to about 60-90 seconds as they are bombarded with cat videos, WorldStar HipHop, and other trivial garbage on Anti-Social media, so the "traditional" media has to compete with this and create their content accordingly.
No one wants to spend 5 minutes reading a bunch of technical jargon they don't understand when the next episode of Empire is coming on.