Global News getting in virtually while students on lockdown

There is a stabbing in a school, the students are in their classrooms under lockdown and imagine this, someone is trying to get into their classroom! Someone trying to make them unsafe and put them at risk. But it isn’t the person with a knife…it is reporters from Global News!

I remember as a kid doing lockdown drills and then as a teacher walking my own class through them. You aren’t supposed to be making noise, you aren’t supposed to be on your phone and you need to wait quietly until the lockdown is over.

Global News’ reporters took to Twitter to find students in lockdown at the school and scrambled to get someone inside to do a video call with them. As adults they should have known better. Erick Espinosa wasn’t successful and the student did the correct thing. Gabby Rodrigues was able to convince a student and she is the one featured in the video below.

I am not going into the details of it as you can find it in the article here: http://globalnews.ca/news/2534517/pickering-high-school-in-lockdown-after-several-students-stabbed/ but if you Skype with a student and have her hiding under a desk…that is breaking protocol. It disgusted me because it is going out of the way to make students and staff unsafe. It also sets a horrible precedent that reporters will now try to do this on other situations and students feel it’s ok to be doing calls during lockdowns.

I put in complaints to Global and their parent station with zero response as a concerned educator. I escalated my concern to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and after a few months I got a courtesy response back defending the actions of the reporters. Here is the full letter (below) by Mackay Taggart News Director – Global Toronto . They insist that they didn’t reach out to the students (which is clearly untrue from the following screen shots above) and that the teacher gave permission. I don’t know what teacher would ever allow a student to do a Skype call during a lockdown. Anyways that is my report on the matter and hope that Global and other news agencies respect school protocol and police protocol to make schools safer!

Full Letter from Global Viewer Feedback – Zoras