If we are talking a group of friends that meet every Thursday night and maybe with a new guy once in a while. Then why cant we up the scale on realistic material for them.
You absolutely can. Every single scene of every single Mission has all kinds of optional stuff that GMs can do (or not do) to alter the difficulty or otherwise change the tone, and there's absolutely no one, ever, that's going to come to your house and tell you you're running an adventure wrong.
Missions have to be written with
not that group in mind, though. They've got to be readily accessible to the convention-going crowd, which is going to be composed of folks with all different skill levels and experience with the game (GMs included), but also people that may or may not
want realism. It's safer to give people high-octane gaming that's gonna hook 'em on the setting, not an episode of
Law & Order or something.
I guess what i am trying to ask is, are there any plans on making "episodes" ripped from the headlines? Any new source material geared more towards law enforcement, military or criminal fiction that stems in real world practicality?
Probably not for Missions as much as you'd like, because how do you run that when people show up with a Pixie, a techno-mage, a shaman that can turn into a miniature dragon, and four guys who can throw fireballs? They don't want realism, and they'll either not have a good time, blow it all up, or not have a good time while blowing it all up.
Shadowrun is not realistic, and depending on the group of players no given adventure can even really
support much realism. You can't randomly inject one adventure's worth of "reality" into the setting, the best you can hope for is
verisimilitude; what passes for reality in Shadowrun's reality.
Now, all that said? I'm not trying to bust your chops, here, I'm just trying to explain why "realism" is a dangerous thing, and difficult to inject (in small doses) into a setting as wacky and over-the-top as Shadowrun. Aside from all that, though?
If you've got a bitchin' idea for a Missions adventure with some ripped-from-the-headlines premise, and you think other folks would like to play it? Talk to Bull, write it up if he wants you to, and CGL'll cut you a check. Missions can always use more writers.