“NBC News has sent private security personnel to the increasingly dicey Gulf Coast region to help keep its employees safe while covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” THR’s Paul Gough reports.

“The private security officers, usually former soldiers or police, are licensed to carry firearms and are trained to keep the situation under control so that journalists can do their jobs safely.”

NBC News is the first to publicly acknowledge that it had taken such a step. “Other networks either declined to discuss security or said the situation hadn’t risen to that level yet.”

“We’ve never been in a situation domestically like this, where the populace has been cut off from the rest of the world and there’s no food and water,” NBC News VP David Verdi says…