Tuesday’s kidnapping and hostage standoff in South Windsor, led to an ethical dilemma inside our newsroom through the afternoon. How do we handle covering a story--where the police have specifically asked us not to broadcast the same story?

News Channel 8 reporter Bob Wilson interviews South Windsor police officer during hostage standoff, July 7, 2009.

This story began in our Noon newscast on Tuesday, when we carried a brief item from the Hartford Courant about a police standoff in South Windsor. Unable to get South Windsor police to tell us anything about the situation over the phone, and before our first news staff could arrive on the scene, we had to relay reports from another news source as to what was happening. (This isn’t uncommon, all of the state’s major news organizations belong to the Associated Press and feed news stories to each other throughout each day. Our policy is to be clear about acknowledging the source of the original reporting.)

Shortly after we broadcast this first item, we became aware that South Windsor police were asking for the media not to report on the situation, because Richard Shenkman, the man police said was holding the hostage, was making a series of demands, including one that the press not report to the public about the standoff, even as it was happening.

The next development in the story was when that Shenkman was communicating by telephone with Karen Florin, a reporter at The Day of New London that he had spoken with in the past, about his list of demands from the house in South Windsor. It was clear that the man communicating with police and reporter Florin, was threatening the life of his hostage and himself. We now know that hostage was Shenkman’s ex-wife Nancy Tyler. At the scene, Shenkman was making statements about having rigged the house with cameras and explosives. At this point we decided to honor the police request to hold back any further coverage and went so far as to remove the story from our own website at wtnh.com

As standoff continued and the afternoon progressed towards our 5pm newscast, we were considering what--if anything--we might report about the story, which was now making news on a national level, with calls coming into us from ABC News, CNN and others. Reporter Bob Wilson was on the scene with photographers Kevin Frederick and Mark Ciesinski ready to report live, but our plan was to hold off on broadcasting any story until there was some word from police negotiators that airing a story would not potentially aggravate the situation.

You can understand that the idea of not reporting a story that we know is happening at that very moment, isn’t something we do very easily or without some serious consideration. When all was said and done, the ultimate decision to broadcast—or in this case not to broadcast—rests with me as the station’s News Director.

My decision in this case was to honor the police request through the afternoon hours.

We’ve since learned that the police in both South Windsor and Hartford, where the situation began with the alleged kidnapping of Ms Tyler on Tuesday morning, asked the Hartford Courant and other news outlets to withhold any reporting about the situation so as to not endanger her—or anyone else’s life during the often tense situation. The Courant’s editors considered the request, but ultimately decided to keep reporting the story on their website throughout the afternoon. The Day initially held their story on the standoff, but then ultimately ran a report on their website at 2:45pm. By 3pm, South Windsor Police Commander Matthew Reed told a press briefing at the scene that coverage of the event, specifically that of the Hartford Courant, was complicating negotiations.

Shortly before 5pm, we were informed at the scene that we could broadcast a story about the stand-off with police, but that it would be preferable if we didn’t report the names of the people in the house that police had surrounded. Again, we agreed to this request. Some stations withheld names in their 5 and 6pm reports as we did, others chose not to.

As the evening later progressed, the story continued to develop with the hostage getting out of the house and then later the standoff ended when the police captured Shenkman after a fire burned down the house that had been surrounded by police for some 15 hours.

Now in the aftermath of the events as they unfolded, there are questions about how the requests to limit news coverage of the hostage drama were received, and how they were dealt with by each news organization involved, including ours.

Reviewing our own actions, my belief is that we acted responsibly in deciding to limit our coverage as requested until such time that we felt that our reports would not aggravate an already tenuous situation. This isn’t to suggest that other news organizations may not have also made the right decisions in regards to their own coverage, because each had to evaluate their decisions-in the light of their own standards.

So all of this ultimately brings us to your opinion. Should news organizations restrict coverage of a difficult situation when asked to do so by law enforcement or government officials, citing that lives might be at stake? If it was your call, your decision to make, what would you do, and why would you do that? We're very interested in hearing all of your opinions.