That's mainly a holdover from the original SMF reporting system, which only sent out reports by email. The only reason we keep it around is that some of us use it to be notified immediately if certain high-priority keywords are used in a report.
I have to admit that I must be a bit conditioned to American feeds because the first word that came to mind was Terrorism
(More likely here Scammers Ponzis Keyloggers/Viruses and the sort)