Here’s another sticky wicket for the newspaper folk to wrestle with. What would you have done?  One point of order for when you get to that part: I would like to hear the explanation as to why a technical problem would make it impossible to take a story down. Cached version on Google perhaps?

 
Eddie A. Perez
Mayor

July 8, 2009
 
Richard Graziano
Publisher
The Hartford Courant
285 Broad Street
Hartford, Connecticut 06106
 
RE: Request to remove story from Courant.com about hostage standoff in South Windsor
 
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.
 
Sincerely,

Eddie A. Perez                                                             Daryl K. Roberts
Mayor                                                                          Chief of Police

Here’s the Courant’s explanation, excerpted from the story:

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.”