If you’re part of a press organisation you’ll have things like risk assessments and training to mitigate those risks, fall back plans, people who know where you are and are responsible for your safety, people who liase with emergency services, etc

If you can prove you belong to such an organisation that’s great, you’re press. In the U.K. press have a card to prove this, issued on behalf of the police. It doesn’t give you any rights by law, but if the police started locking down the press like they do in countries without guarantees on the freedom of the press - China, Myanmar, USA, etc, then it becomes a political matter.

> Don't want to do a mandatory evacuation when there's a wildfire near your house? Just say you're press and exempt from the evacuation order.

So let them. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. The government's job is to make people aware of the risk, not to stand between worthy recipients and their Darwin award.

For better or for worse, the people who fight fires often interfere with natural selection. Even when it means risking their own lives.

So do journalists. If you want a compelling picture of the fire, or the ability to document what it was like, you kind of have to be in the general vicinity of the fire.

And most people aren't suicidal, so most of the people who go there and take that risk are going to be doing it for a reason. We can suffer a few people lying about which reason it was when there aren't all that many of them and they still fundamentally had one.

If you are press, then wouldn't you have press credentials ?

Not necessarily, government agencies don't issue credentials, the news agencies give them to their staff. So we run into problems when independent journalists, freelancers, and citizen journalists either have passes they make for themselves (which cops probably won't respect) or no passes at all.