News Becoming News
So, here at work we cover bomb threats way too much, whether they are at a school, court houses and/or banks...yesterday we covered our own bomb threat.
It was just a typical day before the Memorial Day weekend. Tracy and I were talking about everything under the sun and I was making fun of Chris for his new laid-back-chest-hair-showing-sneaker-wearing-style. Nothing out of the usual for our assignment desk.
That all changed at 4:42. I intercepted a call from the our security desk, the young lady on the other end who I have talked to often said "Hey it's the security desk, someone just called me and said that there is a bomb in the building...what should I do?"
Without sounding harsh, my first thought was..."I am an assignment editor...you're security...shouldn't you be out ninja chopping some ass by now" but I knew that wasn't the right thing to say. So I told her I would take care of it....what exactly I would take care of I am not sure, was I going to go all "Hurt Locker" and find the said "bomb" dismantle it?...No obvisouly.
I did the next best thing, I told Chris about it, which turned this whole situation into the real thing.
We had security calling 911, we informed the newsroom what was going on, went upstairs to inform the sales department what was going on and than I called the Station Manager, Klarn.
Soon enough we were outside in the parking lot, the Calvary arrived and we were being pushed back into the farthest point from the building.
We were moved across the street eventually and let back into the building after police cleared the building and with that...the threat was over.
We were back into the building at 5:52 and we successfully got onto air at 6pm, almost like nothing ever happened. Is that called resilience? Is that called showing the threat who is boss?
We addressed the situation on our stations FB page/over twitter/and on air to spread the word about what was going on.
Reflecting back now, it seems a bit scary that a single phone call claiming a threat can cause such chaos. Especially at a station that covers these events almost weekly.
Truthfully, I am worried there will be copy-cats. Someone will see what happened and see that in an instance they can take down a corporation and truthfully "turn off the news" for an hour while everyone here scrambles out of the building, calling loved ones and texting family members just in-case.
Just in-case what though? Just incase someone truthfully made it through our security system unnoticed, just in case someone decided that the news really needed to be silenced for a while?
I hope the person who created this chaos is found and punished to the fullest extent. The world we live in right now is damaged enough, we don't need any more tragedy. Find the love, find the hope and find the healing.
It was just a typical day before the Memorial Day weekend. Tracy and I were talking about everything under the sun and I was making fun of Chris for his new laid-back-chest-hair-showing-sneaker-wearing-style. Nothing out of the usual for our assignment desk.
That all changed at 4:42. I intercepted a call from the our security desk, the young lady on the other end who I have talked to often said "Hey it's the security desk, someone just called me and said that there is a bomb in the building...what should I do?"
Without sounding harsh, my first thought was..."I am an assignment editor...you're security...shouldn't you be out ninja chopping some ass by now" but I knew that wasn't the right thing to say. So I told her I would take care of it....what exactly I would take care of I am not sure, was I going to go all "Hurt Locker" and find the said "bomb" dismantle it?...No obvisouly.
I did the next best thing, I told Chris about it, which turned this whole situation into the real thing.
We had security calling 911, we informed the newsroom what was going on, went upstairs to inform the sales department what was going on and than I called the Station Manager, Klarn.
Soon enough we were outside in the parking lot, the Calvary arrived and we were being pushed back into the farthest point from the building.
We were moved across the street eventually and let back into the building after police cleared the building and with that...the threat was over.
We were back into the building at 5:52 and we successfully got onto air at 6pm, almost like nothing ever happened. Is that called resilience? Is that called showing the threat who is boss?
We addressed the situation on our stations FB page/over twitter/and on air to spread the word about what was going on.
Reflecting back now, it seems a bit scary that a single phone call claiming a threat can cause such chaos. Especially at a station that covers these events almost weekly.
Truthfully, I am worried there will be copy-cats. Someone will see what happened and see that in an instance they can take down a corporation and truthfully "turn off the news" for an hour while everyone here scrambles out of the building, calling loved ones and texting family members just in-case.
Just in-case what though? Just incase someone truthfully made it through our security system unnoticed, just in case someone decided that the news really needed to be silenced for a while?
I hope the person who created this chaos is found and punished to the fullest extent. The world we live in right now is damaged enough, we don't need any more tragedy. Find the love, find the hope and find the healing.
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