Thanks for sharing!
As a journalist myself who covered protests in a couple of cities with the big "E" here in Texas, it made it very difficult to accurately and safely report what was happening and I felt it did jeopardize my safety not being able to know in realtime what was happening, i.e. what the police were doing so I could stay out of their way and not take a rubber bullet or get tear gassed or to know in real time what was happening with the crowds in places I could not see for myself and not put myself in a dangerous situation. Luckily this particular city had some talkgroups patched to an interoperability talkgroup that was in the clear and I was able to hear some of what was happening.
Another instance is I was in another city, which is a suburb, covering looting, there were probably 10-15 business that got looted in a looting convoy and I was unable to hear the police get dispatched to cover it. I had no clue any of that was happening until someone reached out with a news tip and I was able to go put eyes on it myself, AFTER police were gone. This particular city also has had a large number of shootings, stabbings and homicides over the past year that the media has not been able to cover in real time at the scene, instead, they just send out a press release the next day and we're forced to run a stock photo. There's no telling how many things such as surges in crimes like burglaries or robberies or other violent crime go unreported these days as we are only told about what they want us to know about. Very sad to see government locking the press and citizens out of knowing what is happening in our own communities. Sure, like this reported said, they will give the big "legitimate" news stations and newspapers radios, ON THEIR TERMS and requiring very expensive equipment marked with a large "M" or a large "H" and payment to program (I have heard programming here costs around $1000), but what about the small independent citizen journalists or smaller news agencies who also have a right to be able to freely and accurately cover what is going on?
I'm not trying to open up a debate about the big "E" topic, this is just me weighing in as someone who is effected and frustrated by this. Glad to see this topic is being talked about by a station who has nationwide affiliates. Hopefully this will gain traction across the country to allow journalists to fairly and accurately report the news again, while there is still a scene. Being able to see the scene for yourself and ask questions to authority is a BIG piece of transparency that is beginning to be left out more and more often, also it helps retain the attention of those reading the news to have photo or video of the scene to visualize what happened.
