How should the news media prepare for and cope with a potential bioterrorist attack? In this Fred Friendly Seminar, Professor Michael Dorf of the Columbia University School of Law and 12 panelists role-play a hypothetical scenario that begins in a city hospital where a spike in a flu-like illness causes the ER staff to confront a chilling possibility: that it is not the flu at all, but something far worse. What should the ER do with the overflow of patients? Send them home? What if they are contagious? When does bioterrorism become a possible cause? When should the health department be contacted? When will the public find out, and what will their reaction be? What is the job of the journalists covering this story? Should they report the story when the health department is uncertain of the diagnosis but rumors are flying and the public is clamoring for information? A lively panel wrestles with these and a host of other dilemmas. Panelists include Douglas Clifton, editor of The Plain Dealer (Cleveland); Jerome Hauer, former acting assistant secretary for public health emergency preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services; Joseph Henderson, associate director of terrorism preparedness at the CDC; Seattle Chief of Police R. Gil Kerlikowske; Paula Madison, president and general manager of KNBC-TV, in L.A.; Boston Mayor Thomas Menino; Lewis Nelson, M.D., of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Bellevue Hospital; Frank Sesno, former Washington bureau chief of CNN; and Kathleen Toomey, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Division of Public Health at the Georgia Department of Human Resources.