Over the course of 2015, a reporter and photographer were shot dead during a local morning news live cut-in. Other reports throughout the year tell of reporters and crew being threatened with hostile aggression and being robbed while doing their jobs. Some were caught on camera. Until 2015, live-on-TV murders never happened except for Lee Harvey Oswald, and live robberies were nearly as rare. As times change, so do threat levels.

Nearly all TV stations have security policies and procedures in place. Most stations are understandably reluctant to share their written security strategies.

If your station’s security strategy doesn’t include the words “Lock All Doors,” and "Beware of Your Surroundings at All Times," it should. “Be Aware" deserves upgrading to "Beware" for a reason. Whether on the streets in the heat of social protests, on in the cool confines of a TV studio, beware of lurking dangers. The likelihood for dangerous situations to unexpectedly unfold near broadcast TV cameras appears to be ramping up everywhere.

One of the chief safety concerns facing broadcasters is also one of the most valuable virtues successful TV news people and engineers share. It is the ability to ignore distractions and focus on the job and deadline at hand. This admirable trait has proven to also be quite dangerous, and fatal. Short of well-trained armed guards, the only effective remedy is to be “Ever Vigilant.” Danger feasts on opportunity.

Lock the doors

From the 14 December 2015 Kansas City Star: “Three men, including one armed with a handgun, held up a KCTV news crew Sunday night and stole their cellphones and wallets, according to Kansas City police.”

At about 9:30 p.m., the crew was inside a KCTV news van parked in a dimly-lit church parking lot, preparing a story for the 10 o’clock news. Suddenly three men jerked the van’s unlocked front doors open.

“One man pointed a silver handgun at the crew members and demanded their phones and wallets. The robbers took the items and ran north, police said,” according to the newspaper report.

Later that night, police arrested three people and recovered the stolen items. The KCTV crew was lucky.

In March 2015, thieves stole camera gear from a KTVU van parked in Oakland CA's Fruitvale neighborhood. In June 2015, KTVU reporter Heather Holmes’ purse was snatched from inside an unlocked news van during a live story across the street from Oakland police headquarters. You might think across the street from the local cop shop would be a reasonably safe place. Not anymore.

No doors

About 6 a.m on 2 July 2015, two San Francisco TV news crews were robbed of their camera gear at gunpoint during live shots at the site of an earlier news event. The KNTV camera operator was pistol-whipped and his camera stolen. A KTVU crew doing a live show at the same location witnessed what happened to KNTV and left their work to tend to the injured KNTV crew. Off camera, the robber then pointed a gun at the KTVU camera operator, stole KTVU’s camera and tripod and fled. A KTVU crew member managed to capture an image of the masked assailant.

The Oakland safety issue has several TV stations sending armed security guards out with reporters and crews covering news there. But, the growing TV crew crime threat isn’t confined to just Oakland or street protests.

While covering protests in Baltimore in April 2015, a RT reporter was attacked and robbed by a throng of protesters. RT's camera captured the mayhem.

In March 2015, a TV reporter was mugged live on camera in South Africa during a live report. 

Numerous print reporters have also been threatened, robbed or injured around the world in 2015. The print journalist trend is ticking upward but not near the latest rate of TV journalist and TV crew incidents.

Tragic reminder

26 August 2015 should serve as a dark reminder to all broadcasters that people with issues aren’t always on the other side of the studio glass. That was when reporter Alison Parker and camera operator Adam Ward at CBS affiliate WDBJ in Roanoke VA were shot and killed while doing a routine morning news live cut-in on tourism. The person being interviewed survived a gunshot wound in her back. The tragic event was the first on-the-job murder of a broadcast news person since 1978, and the first live on air.

The murderer was a former reporter who had been hired by the station in 2012. Three months after being hired, the station news director ordered him to get counseling because coworkers were "feeling threatened or uncomfortable" when working with him. Six months later he was fired. Two years after that, he showed up at a morning live show to kill people, apparently for revenge.

WDBJ recently posted a story on its website reporting the NAB recently completed a fundraising campaign in memory of Alison Parker and Adam Ward. The NAB fund raised nearly $90,000.

According to the web post, the NAB said it received contributions as small as $25 from individuals, and others exceeding $10,000 from some broadcasting companies. The money was divided equally between the families of Parker and Ward, the surviving interviewee and The Committee to Protect Journalists.

On the other hand

A live shot is not where you would expect a criminal to return to the scene of the crime. But that’s what happened on 16 December while KIMT-TV reporter Adam Sallet was doing a live-story outside a local bank that was robbed the day before. During his standup, a bank employee ran out of the bank, on-camera, pointing at the fleeing suspect who had just robbed the bank again, moments before the report went live. The reporter maintained his cool, barely missing a beat, and the robber was later arrested.

Reporter Sallet told ABC News “that ‘Nothing like this’ has ever happened to him in his years of reporting and that his first thought was whether to keep reporting the original script or to call 911 and inform authorities.” Spoken like a true broadcaster, Adam.