Yesterday part of downtown was blocked to traffic due to a hostage situation which was reported on by the Hartford Courant. Today, the Mayor and Chief of Police have sent a letter to the newspaper’s publisher expressing their “concern” about the media outlet’s poor judgment:
Dear Mr. Graziano:
We are contacting you to express our deep concern about the decision of The Hartford Courant to ignore the request of law enforcement authorities yesterday to temporarily remove from the Courant website a story about the hostage standoff in South Windsor. As you know, Richard Shenkman the alleged kidnapper, was in an armed standoff with multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Hartford Police, at his home in South Windsor when he informed law enforcement officials he intended to detonate explosives if the Courant did not remove a story concerning the hostage situation from its website by 2:30 p.m. The Hartford Police, South Windsor Police and the Hartford Mayor’s Office contacted Courant officials requesting that the story be removed prior to 2:30 p.m. Contrary to the story reported in today’s Courant, the paper’s staff did not say they could not take the story down due to technical issues, they said they would not take the story down as other news outlets were reporting on the incident and it would set a precedent.
It is extremely rare for a law enforcement agency to request a media outlet not publish information at the request of a suspect during an ongoing operation. Based on the previous behavior of the individual, the fact the suspect was armed and barricaded, was holding his ex-wife hostage and the potential for the presence of explosives, law enforcement officials made a request that was designed to reduce the potential for the suspect, victim, police officers or innocent bystanders from being killed or seriously injured. In response to this reasonable request, the Courant and its staff placed a higher value on generating website viewership than protecting human life. This is deeply disturbing.
Though the Courant is going through a difficult transition and has adopted a new way of doing business, it should not jettison its sense of corporate citizenship in the community it has called home for centuries. No media outlet should be forced to change its coverage based on the whims of someone threatening violence. That being said, the Courant should carefully review its response to this incident and put in place policies that balance responsible journalism with a duty to the larger community.
The courage, restraint and training of the police officers and public safety personnel involved ended this volatile situation without loss of human life. We are not sure that in a similar situation if the Courant took the same stance it took yesterday the outcome would be as favorable.
While the public has the right to know about what is going on, they do not have this right when it means that someone involved may likely be harmed as a result.
lobonick
i disagree with your conclusion on this one. crazy people on a rampage don’t get to call the shots in society. allowing them to do this only enpowers them. the news industry is a multi-million dollar operation. their responsibility is to report news. the kidnapping and hostage situation the other day was news. if the madman doesn’t want the coverage, then give up. even if he isn’t thinking rationally, society isn’t required to go along with his irrational vision.
kerri provost
I don’t know that pulling the story entirely makes sense, but I don’t think that the amount of detail was necessary. Additionally, beyond alerting the public at the time that certain streets were closed due to a hostage situation, I don’t know that the whole background of this was relevant to anyone’s lives outside of the immediately involved people. Personally, if I were the victim in this, I wouldn’t want the very personal details of a divorce thrown around for the public’s lurid curiosity.
lobonick
news is news. the other day’s activities definitely fell under the umbrella of news. was the background relevant ? relevance can be interpreted very broadly. for example, in the legal arena, evidence is considered “relevant” if has almost anything to do with the issue at hand.
the real story here, however, is how the family law system is so highly volatile. this scene along with the incident previously in Ellington shows that the system can lead directly to violence. the state and the system needs to become more aware of this. these are issues that hopefully the legislature can look into. also these ex-husbands need to get a better grip on reality. they are giving guys a bad name in this state. being single isn’t that bad.