History DeadlineNews / RealLife

** On June 1, 2020 in Washington, Australian reporter Amelia Brace and cameraman Tim Myers were covering the protest when [[https://twitter.com/sunriseon7/status/1267587976986427393 police officer hit Myers and punched his camera.]]

* In a news report during the [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror September 11, 2001 attacks]], reporter N.J. Burkett of ABC standing a few blocks from World Trade Center 7 was reporting that the fire department had cleared out of the building, fearing that its collapse was imminent... during this report, the building indeed collapsed, and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCPVNLLo-mI the reporter found himself running from a cloud of smoke and debris.]]

** Also during the 2020 Minnesota Riots, MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi was hit by a police rubber bullet.

* Reporter Herb Morrison's eyewitness account of UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg explosion May 6, 1937, is as memorable as the event itself (his famous exclamation of "Oh, the humanity!" (he actually said "All the humanities") has been homaged and parodied countless times[[note]]If the expression seems a little odd, he was using "humanity" to refer directly to the people involved -- he used that word to describe any large group of people -- while today the word [[HaveAGayOldTime usually refers to morality, e.g. "You have no humanity"]]. He was basically saying "Oh no, all those people!"[[/note]]). It was the inspiration for countless dramatic portrayals of badass broadcasters engaging in similar heroics. (Morrison wasn't injured in the explosion, continued covering the rescue efforts, and died in 1989.)

* On December 2, 2015, a San Bernadino California anchor was [[http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/local-reporter-caught-in-middle-of-san-bernardino-shootout/ caught behind a police chase involving the suspects of the San Bernadino terror attack when shots rang out.]]

* On August 26, 2015, Alison Parker and Adam Ward, a reporter and cameraman (respectively) for WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Virginia, [[http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/08/26/roanoke-news-wdbj-_n_8043078.html were shot and killed during a live report]] and the gunman, a disgruntled ex-coworker and [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals animal abuser]], appeared on camera briefly as it fell over. The gunman himself uploaded his video of the shooting shortly after, but it was later removed and both his Twitter and Facebook accounts were permanently suspended. The gunman fled and was shot in an altercation with police hours after the shooting.

* If WorldWarIII had broken out during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, emergency broadcast protocols actually would have called for radio stations to continue broadcasting emergency instructions for as long as possible -- [[ApocalypticLog until the bombs hit, or until their emergency generators ran out of juice after the attack]]. Although pre-recorded messages were created (with the BBC known to have developed an entertainment-style program to keep morale up), someone had to be available to provide current information.[[note]]Many fictionalized accounts of nuclear war or other world-ending disaster depict reporters panicking or breaking down emotionally [[UsefulNotes/{{Hindenburg}} Herb Morrison]] style at the prospect. This page features numerous examples.[[/note]] These days this trope likely applies less as many emergency notification messages are now delivered via computerized voice and should the need arise the system could be programmed remotely to provide information, or a report can be "phoned in" without the need to have a live person sitting at a studio microphone near a potential ground zero.

* Norwegian reporter Odd Karsten Tveit is famous for his calm when reporting from conflict zones such as the middle east, [[https://youtu.be/JR2I_L9CL14?t=31 as seen in this clip.]]

*** And while on the topic of the Philippines, one of the most iconic moments on Philippine Television was [[https://youtu.be/ElMZI9TDhNk this episode of Jessica Soho Reports]] back in 2002, where seasoned journalist Jessica Soho flies to Afghanistan to report on the war-torn country during the then-ongoing Afghan War. A portion of the episode has Soho and her crew tag along with the Danish Demining Group to check on their efforts on demining a community outside an airbase. They then get word of deminers getting killed while disarming landmines nearby, and they capture what was supposed to be a somber scene where the remains of a deminer are carried away in the DDG’s ambulance as it slowly rolls away… only for them to witness the ambulance ''exploding'' as it runs over an undetected landmine. Soho and her crew were unharmed, if not with a few minor scrapes and scratches, but 3 of the 5 passengers inside the ambulance had perished in the explosion. What’s worse? The area where the ambulance exploded, and thus the location of the landmine, was ''just outside the DDG’s field office, where Soho and her crew had visited just moments before and was considered cleared of landmines''. The reaction of the DDG representative that’s with Soho the whole time says it all.

* Japanese television station ABC (not affiliated with the American or Australian broadcasting companies) in Osaka [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i9bjJMHs8Y became witness to the Great Hanshin earthquake in 1995]] when the quake struck ''just mere moments after the station had started broadcasting their morning program.'' The situation could’ve been a lot worse though, as during the time, ABC was well known for broadcasting their morning programs atop a broadcasting tower next to the station’s head office. It just so happens that the morning program was beamed from one of the studios in said head office for that day because the elevators in the tower were undergoing maintenance. Had the morning program been broadcasted from the tower instead, it likely would have resulted in the hosts and crew being trapped atop the tower, or something far worse.

* The May 17, 1974 shootout between UsefulNotes/LosAngeles police and the Symbionese Liberation Army (which had become notorious nationally for kidnapping Hearst newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, who later [[StockholmSyndrome joined her captors]]) resulted in several [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbv661NS5ck local reporters experiencing close calls]]; including [[Creator/{{ABC}} KABC-TV]] reporter Christine Lund, knocking on a door of a building once used as an SLA hideout when shots were fired nearby and another KABC crew having a bullet whiz by them.

* Speaking of which, the {{UsefulNotes/Philippines}} routinely is this for much of its media industry since the country has spent several years at or near the top of lists of "most dangerous countries for journalists" (in peacetime, not covering wartime reportage, but still). Journalists are often targeted by powerful entrenched interests from both private (e.g. [[CorruptCorporateExecutive mining and logging]] [[MegaCorp firms]]) and public (e.g. {{Corrupt Politician}}s) sectors, and reporters being gunned down in broad daylight, usually by thugs on motorbikes, is as much news as whatever news they were already reporting. On a larger scale, entire media networks can be targeted for sanctions or even shutdowns based on the mere suspicion that they might be biased, anti-government, opposition media. And that's just under nominally democratic governments—during the martial law period in TheSeventies and TheEighties all independent media were censored, bought out by dictatorship cronies, or fully shut down, and their staff fired or even arrested and imprisoned.
** The country's pervasive love-hate relationship with its media dates back to colonial regimes when anticolonial media outfits were similarly persecuted; see the Spanish-language, anti-American newspaper ''El Renacimiento'' ("The Renaissance/Rebirth") being sued by American officials for libel over an insulting editorial during the 1900s-decade, barely a decade since the United States colonised the then-new Philippine Republic, itself just newly freed from ''Spanish'' colonisers at the time. Censorship was also not uncommon under Spanish rule itself, jointly wielded by Spanish Catholic friars and civil/military authorities, though this would vary in severity depending on the governor-general in power.

* Creator/AlJazeera lost several reporters during the [[UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict Second Intifada]], some of whom were recording at the time. Since reporters are required to give their locations to the IDF, the already-Israeli-critical network took it [[ItsPersonal deeply personally]] when some of those deaths were caused by IDF strikes.

* Creator/{{CNN}}'s coverage of the massive [[http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/06/02/cnn.tiananmen.coverage/ 1989 Chinese student rebellion]] was this, especially when Chinese authorities came to the bureau and ordered them to stop transmitting. They kept right on sending until the cameras were turned off. [[http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/01/world/asia/tiananmen-chinoy/index.html This coverage influences the world's view of China]] to this day. Twenty years later, Chinese officials [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGHd2bPn4ZU blocked CNN from carrying a memorial gathering]].

** Dan Rather also became the news on another famous occasion: in 1986, he was attacked and beaten by two assailants, one of whom repeatedly screamed, "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" There was widespread coverage of the incident, which was unsolved for more than 10 years, and the enigmatic question—slightly modified to "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"— [[TheCatchphraseCatchesOn came to broad attention]].

* In 1982, the anchors of KOOL-TV (now KSAZ-TV) in Phoenix were held at gunpoint by a man who wanted "to prevent WorldWarIII". After holding them hostage for several hours, he then forced them to interrupt programming around 9:30 PM to make anchor Bill Close read a statement by him for about 20 minutes with a gun pointed at his belly the entire time. It included such gems as instructing Music/JohnnyCash to tell Queen Elizabeth II to evacuate London before it was nuked by {{UsefulNotes/Argentina}}[[note]]which is ''slightly'' less insane than it sounds because UsefulNotes/TheFalklandsWar was going on around this time, but only slightly, and never mind that Argentina has no nuclear program.[[/note]], that UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan's son Ricky (who doesn't exist by the way; his sons are named Micheal and Ron) was being brainwashed by Islam, that Islam is responsible for hippies and PunkRock, and that Phoenix would be invaded by an army of ants. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWaQFguerFc You can watch the entire thing here.]] Fortunately, no one was hurt.

** Dan Rather also became the news on another famous occasion: in 1986, he was attacked and beaten by two assailants, one of whom screamed, "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" There was widespread coverage of the incident, and the slightly modified "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" [[TheCatchphraseCatchesOn came to broad attention]].

* "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddrKLqpH5AA Take your hands off me unless you plan to arrest me!]]" Dan Rather, covering the 1968 Democratic National Convention from the floor of the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, had seen a delegate from Georgia approaching the podium only to be hauled away toward the exit by Mayor Richard Daley's "security guards". When Dan tried to speak to the delegate, the police began beating ''him.''
--> Creator/WalterCronkite: I think we've got a bunch of THUGS here, Dan, if I may be permitted to say so.

* Reporter Herb Morrison's eyewitness account of UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg explosion May 6, 1937, is as memorable as the event itself (his famous exclamation of "Oh, the humanity!" (he actually said "All the humanities") has been homaged and parodied countless times[[note]]If the expression seems a little odd, he was using "humanity" to refer directly to the people involved -- he used that word to describe any large group of people -- while today the word [[HaveAGayOldTime usually refers to morality, e.g. "You have no humanity"]]. He was basically saying "Oh no, all those people!"[[/note]]). It was the inspiration for countless dramatic portrayals of badass broadcasters engaging in similar heroics.

* On the morning of December 6, 1917, a French munitions ship loaded with explosives collided with another ship and caught fire in the Narrows Strait just off [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion Halifax, Nova Scotia]]. At the railyard near Pier 6 where the burning ship drifted in, dispatcher Vince Coleman and a coworker were told what was happening and ran for their lives -- only for Coleman to turn back when he remembered a passenger train was about to come in. He ran back to the station and sent out one telegraph message after another warning the train to stop. ''Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye, boys.'' Minutes later the ship exploded, killing 2000 people, including Coleman; it was the largest man-made explosion in recorded history prior to the atomic bomb. But his messages were received by other stations down the line, letting officials respond. All incoming trains stopped in time. His heroism was widely remembered, including in one of the highest honours Canadian society can bestow: a [[Film/HeritageMinutes Heritage Minute]] ''that nobody makes jokes about.''