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"We do not air bomb threats." That used to be the policy here in the KSL Newsroom. Of course, it also used to be that when a bomb threat was called into a school, students would all march out onto the school lawn until there was an "all clear." Those days are gone. There's no way in today's "terrorist environment" journalists can ignore any type of threat. First, chances are better today than they were a decade ago that the threat is real. Second, when you have an entire school or any other building evacuated that's obviously news. Think about it. How would you feel if your child's school was evacuated you couldn't find out any information? Wouldn't you feel a bit panicky, not knowing if your child was safe or whether you should go pick them up? And if you tuned into KSL and didn't get that information, wouldn't you feel like we had let you down? Unfortunately, the painful downside to covering bomb threats is that they always lead to copy cat crimes like the ones we've seen this week. They not only scare children, but disrupt their learning.
