Police Scanners and the Press went Silent
The topic of Police Scanners has been around for many decades, I recall the first scanner I owned was an old transistor type scanner that kept us entertained in regards to all local excitement for many years, police, fire, airport and for the news media it was a hotline to the top stories of each day with live camera shots of breaking news stories.
With time also came modern innovation, today’s scanners no longer require buying crystals, you just program the frequencies you wish to listen to.
Every news reporter had one, not necessarily that particular model, but a scanner where they could find out about everything from car accidents, to fires, to live police take downs.
Now all good things also have bad side effects, more and more criminals were also in on the quick hotline resulting in the need for change, and that change also came to the RCMP for our entire region, from Prince George all the way through to Prince Rupert, police radio went dead, or they did for people listening in on scanners.
For the most part the silence works great for the RCMP however as far as hearing about local events, unless the fire department is called out, most reporters have no clue as to what important news they missed out on until the local stations post briefings in regards to what happened over the past week. So if your wonder if reporters all went to sleep, nope, they sit waiting for the call to come to them, the world changed once again. The odd part was the silence from reporters in the north here, they suddenly were left in a boat without a paddle.
Stories like the one where a guy lost control of his car after stepping out of it, while in gear, and having it put its front bumper though a bedroom window would have been headline news. In this case no news reporter ever came, they never knew it happened, still don’t is my bet. A very much so public interest story lost due to the changes of radio silence. The media will as a result become more creative and opinionated as opposed to reporting news, that bodes bad for the public either way.
Reporters are now clueless as to what is going on, and maybe too embarrassed to admit it.