- Joined
- Feb 22, 2007
- Messages
- 5,646
To answer your question that you started your post with the answer is... All of them. I am now retired but a long time newspaper reporter who started out as a staff photographer and ended up as department editor for a large seven-day-a-week Inter City daily.How many newspapers, radio, and television outlets actually get news stories from scanners? Not many in my area.
When I was in LE, the designated reporter would come to the station in the morning, sit down with the PIO, and go over "exceptional Incidents". That's how the media got the news. Now, the newspaper is a Gannett holding and it is nothing but USA Today with some local ads and "Staff Writers" for bylines.
The local radio stations source their news from network syndications and the local corporate TV stations would rather post stories of interest to women and certain "high profile" crimes. Big fire downtown? No mention of it. Some unhinged idiot killing domestic pets? Not a word will be said.
The days of reporters getting a "hot scoop" from a scanner went away with fedoras, overcoats, and Crown Speed Graphic cameras.
Initial reports given out on scanners are not always what they seem. A robbery in progress is more likely to be a burglary that happened over the weekend, a house fire is likely to be a small grease fire, etc. Chasing these types of calls is unprofitable and a practical waste of time.
Things are different than they used to be and the reporters today are nowhere close to what the reporters were when I was first a gumshoe. We had personal relationships with the police because we were always working with them on the street, your newspaper is what kept transparency in the police department. After work we would often drink together at the local cop bar. Police tape was for the public not the media, we didn't have fedoras and we used SLRs but I always wore a tie.
At one time we had a deadline but then we went online for survival. Sure there was a cop desk, it would make hourly cop checks by calling each department and asking what's up but most of our lead stories came from guys like me who carried scanners and Motorola radios and the got the scoop. We had burglaries and fires and car accidents all day everyday, It was not considered news unless the accident involved a popular priest on his way to marry a celebrity. Sure multiple fatals causing a massive traffic jam would get a stand-alone photo with a caption. If it was a carload of popular kids on the football team it got a story with a follow-up the next day, maybe even covered the funeral.
Reporters today are not like we were, they are political activists or campaign workers pushing their cause or candidate. They turn the scanner down when it's quitting time, we used to hold the presses and go. Reporters today take the press release from the cops and just write the story, if the report says no shots were fired and the lazy reporter didn't go to the scene to see the bullet-riddled car they didn't do their job and the police didn't have a lot of splainin to do. Of course before encryption, you would hear... Shots fired, shots fired.
In 2000 when departments started using digital radios and digital scanners did not come out till 2003 we bought Motorola radios and the police would program them for us. The mayor in my city told the police chief to give us Motorola Police radios in the name of... The First Amendment, the other seven-day-a-week daily also got the same treatment. That does not happen today, the last thing police want today is a nosy reporter asking questions.
Law enforcement never had a problem with media types, First Responders and serious hobbyist who purchased expensive radio equipment and were well intended. Every police chief I've talked to about encryption always has the same reason for encryption... I'm not going to go into it because we are forbidden to discuss it but it's always the same reason which leads to officer safety, the well-intended hobbyist who purchases sophisticated equipment is not going to hurt police officers. The nitwits who show up at a scene taking pictures with their cell phone which is the same way they heard the call and step on shell casings and other evidence and get in the way is a problem for the police they can do without.
I'm 67 years old now and I've been monitoring police calls first on a tunable since I was 12 and I've listened every day since except for a few hospital stays and it's what led me to be a stringer with my local newspaper in my teens that led to a rewarding career. My County is going encrypted, it's been partially encrypted for a while but now the plans are to go 100% encrypted and I am pissed. All the police chief's in my County all quote the same reason which I'm forbidden to talk about... I am really pissed. Even though I'm retired now I still listen every day just like I did when I was 12... really pissed. Sure there are other things to hear and I listen to all of it but when I see a marked car screaming down the street I want to know what's going on on my "police" scanner.
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