Hartford’s leading newspaper owes its readers an explanation of its news policy regarding the posting and removing of stories during breaking news events.

Here’s the situation: Greg Marx, an editor with the Columbia Journalism Review, has been studying the Courant’s performance during the recent South Windsor hostage situation. He’s trying to assess whether the paper’s editors made the right call when they denied a request by Hartford’s mayor and police chief that a story about the event be removed from the paper’s website. The hostage taker, Richard Shenkman, had demanded that the story come down, saying that if it didn’t, he would detonate a bomb.

Here’s what the paper reported soon after the event:

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.”

Tuesday evening Reed said of Shenkman, “He’s not happy to see the media coverage. He wants to have control over that. “News organizations around the state had different responses to Shenkman’s demand.

This week, however, the editors and publisher have declined to talk to Marx, who represents one of the nation ‘s most respected monitors of media issues. Here’s their official position:

The Hartford Courant says it stands by its decision to keep the story posted. The newspaper says that when it was contacted by police, information about the threat was

incomplete and the level of imminent danger was unclear. Still, the Courant says the letter from city officals raised important issues and has prompted the paper to review its policies about posting and removing stories during breaking news events.

This is the latest in a recent and disturbing trend of refusing to publicly discuss Courant policy. While it might be understandable with respect to employment issues such as layoffs and cutbacks, it is inexcusable when it comes to the paper’s policies on covering the news.

This is, of course, just my opinion, but if newspaper is going to hold its community to high standards of responsibility, reason and transparency, then it has an unstated obligation to practice those values and to lead by example. This includes holding its actions up to public scrutiny, even when it is painful or inconvenient to do so.

It wasn’t that long ago that the paper had a Reader Representative whose job was the embodiment of this principle. The managers  eliminated that position, but if they hope  to maintain the trust and loyalty of their community, they cannot eliminate what the position stood for.

If The Courant did, as it said it would, review its policy because of the Shenkman episode, it owes its readers (not to mention local law enforcers, in this case) a more complete explanation.