Late August’s on-air murders of two WDBJ-TV journalists has a lot of lessons for all journalists.  Besides mental illness, the two were victims of a pattern of copycat incidents of dares and self-dares that their killer - a fired colleague at the TV station - surely was aware of, taken to its logical ultimate extent.
   “FHRITP” taunts of on-air women TV reporters had been a growing pattern for a year or two - an obscene taunt hoping to provoke a reaction that would get those young males dared, or daring themselves, into some variety of on-air coverage during a live shot (a common TV news practice of airing live on-scene news productions nowadays).  Surely, the murderer - a TV journalist himself, if one fired by two stations - was well aware of such incidents; it’s hardly much to say he just took them to the ultimate possible extent.
   The murders rocked Twitter at the time - if largely because, while journalism in the U.S. had become riskier in recent years with high risk of on-the-job robbery in some “bad” locales and police no longer respecting working journalists according to longtime norms (as documented by the National Press Photographers Association) - it was probably the first time any TV journalist had been murdered on-air, let alone by a former colleague.
   Thanks to Twitter and other social media, a portrait of the murder quickly emerged - that he was mentally disturbed, fired by two TV stations for “anger management” problems and quick to allege racial discrimination without cause.
   However, police work provides lessons.  In police squad rooms, there commonly is a poster listing 10 (or 12) mistakes killing experienced police officers.  And two stand out as applicable to the WDBJ murders.
   One is “tombstone courage.”  The poster asks officers to consider calling for backup on risky situations.  TV stations doing stories in Oakland, California - where robberies of on-the-job TV crews have become common - are avoiding that by sending out armed guards with the TV crews.
   Another is prejudging calls.  Just because your story is in a good area - as the one where the two WDBJ journalists were killed in - hardly means you can’t end up in someone else’s mess.  Ask yourself if the story of armed volunteers out front of the Burlington, N.C. military recruiting office (below) couldn’t have had journalists covering it caught in someone else’s firefight had anyone trying to replicate the attack on recruiters in Chattanooga driven up - even though it was in a “good” neighborhood.
   In other words, get your story done and leave fast if it looks risky - and news organizations with problem ex-employees may need to send out guards with current workers.
   Be careful out there.

Heavily-armed volunteers guard Burlington, N.C.’s military-recruitment office, July 22, 2015.
This was in a “good” neighborhood - but risk to journalists covering this was obvious.