Shenkman made numerous demands of police, including that media organizations, among them The Courant, not cover the standoff as it developed.
News executives at The Courant declined to remove coverage from its website. At a 3 p.m. press conference, Reed said the continued coverage by The Courant was complicating negotiations.
Courant interim Editor Naedine Hazell said police called the paper and said Shenkman was demanding the coverage be stopped or he would blow up the house at 2:30 p.m. She said the paper got the call a few minutes before 2:30 p.m., the story had already been widely reported for more than three hours and it was not technically possible to remove stories from courant.com that quickly.
Editors then discussed the demand and decided complying could set a precedent for future hostage situations.
"It was difficult to assess Shenkman's demand given his history. Also, there was no context to the demand, including when it had been made, whether it was part of a lengthy list of demands - which turned out to be the case - and whether it was considered credible," Hazell said in a statement. "Within 90 minutes of the threat, we learned from sources that removing the reports from websites had ceased to be a critical concern."
The ethical part of the Courant editors' argument seems to be similar to US policy not to give concessions to hostage takers, because it will only encourage more hostages to be taken. This part is most relevant to our class, because the instantaneous nature of online journalism allows coverage of hostage situations while they are happening.
As the federal policy states, "Based upon past experience, the US Government concluded that making concessions that benefit hostage takers in exchange for the release of hostages increased the danger that others will be taken hostage." Similarly, if an unbalanced person thinks they can influence media coverage by taking a hostage, more people may be taken hostage in the future.
Of course, this argument would have been of no comfort whatsoever if the woman who was taken hostage had actually been killed.
Perhaps the larger ethical resolution to this quandry is to create a broader policy: Barring extreme circumstances, withhold all stories on hostage situations until the situation is over. I did work in a newsroom where this was the practice (if not a written policy), before the internet was a major factor. By default, I think this is how most standoffs with police are handled... Most of them end peacefully, most of them do not involve a hostage, and there is little coverage in the media.
Social media and the internet might also change the nature of this ethical issue: If neighbors start blogging, tweeting, and creating messages on Facebook, and a hostage taker demands the information be removed, will Twitter, Facebook, or a blog host take down the information? It would probably be impossible to contact all the people relaying the messages and get them to delete them, so should one of these services censor all the users who post about the hostage situation? Is that even possible? And would the actions of Facebook, Twitter, or the blog host then cross over into censorship similar to the Iranian government's effort to disrupt Tweets about the anti-government demonstrations? I am NOT drawing an analogy to the South Windsor hostage situation here, but the Iranian government made a public safety argument, for its attempt to squash the protests. A public safety argument from officials might not always be real, at least in some parts of the world.
It is also important to point out that many reporters' and editors' first instinct is to leave a story in place. From time to time, people try to convince journalists that a story is not news or is old, and therefore should not be aired. Occasionally they will argue that a story should not have run, or should be taken down.
Most of the time, the people making the request work in public relations or politics, and usually they have something to gain by quashing the story. Typically the story in question paints their client or employer in a bad light, and they want the potential damage minimized.
People outside of journalism may not be aware of this because it usually happens behind the scenes, but it is what makes journalists reluctant to pull stories at request: Nine times out of ten the request serves someone's agenda. In this case, it was Mr. Shenkman's agenda.
In this case, neither Mr. Shenkman nor the police contacted the radio station where I work, so we did not have to deal with the ethical dilemma posed here.
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