The Journalist

After a crash, aviation journalists cite the NTSB report, name the failure mode, and ask whether the manufacturer fixed the systemic cause.

Breach coverage has two easy angles: the villain and the victim. Both come with characters. The third angle is the vendor, and it has none, only decisions: which class of coding error, whether it had appeared before in that product, and what changed afterward (see 4V-03).

Cover the integrity of the barn, not just the horses that escaped.

Discussion prompts

• Think of the last breach you read about. Which angle did the coverage take, and what did that leave out?
• What would a reporter need from a manufacturer to write the vendor version of that story?
• What would security journalism look like if it held manufacturers to the standard post-crash aviation reporting holds?