Police upset by media's calls to store where hostages held

In the tense hours after a young man opened fire in Tacoma Mall on Sunday and took hostages in a Sam Goody store, the store phone rang several times. It wasn't hostage negotiators. It was the media.

Monday, police officials said they were upset that journalists from The Associated Press, Fox News and KOMO-TV called the store and interfered with a hostage situation.

"Depending on what they said, they could have said things that could have set him off further. We don't know what his triggers were," Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum said. "Negotiators are specially trained to deal with subjects and bring it to an end. These folks, they're interested in the story and could possibly make the guy even angrier and start the shooting up all over again."

Kenny Irby, an instructor at The Poynter Institute, a journalism school in Florida, called it a "dangerous precedent."

"Every news organization has to consider a certain level of restraint during an ongoing criminal situation. ... When we move beyond our role as witness and become participants in the events, that's where a dangerous line is drawn."

When news organizations found out that a man had shot several people in the mall, the media raced to get information.

Jimm Brown, a spokesman for KOMO-TV, said a KOMO reporter who did not know about the hostage situation called several stores to find witnesses. When a hostage picked up the phone at Sam Goody and described what was happening, the reporter told the hostage to hang up. KOMO then called police and relayed the information before airing it.

"We did not want to do anything that would provoke the gunman to start shooting again," Brown said.

At The Associated Press newsroom in Seattle, News Editor Paul Queary said reporters there had heard the gunman was in the Sam Goody store — but not that he was holding hostages — when they called the store.

The employee who picked up the phone said he was being held hostage.

"The hostage disengaged pretty quickly, but we didn't make any effort to keep him on the phone," Queary said.

Queary said the newsroom had a discussion afterward and "there was a consensus that maybe it was a little too aggressive."

When police and sheriff's deputies found out about the calls, they told the news agencies to stop. Ed Troyer, spokesman for the Pierce County sheriff, told a group of reporters Sunday, "If you do it again, there will be problems."

He said on Monday, "We thought the media was supposed to report, not participate. We had reporters calling and agitating a man with a rifle. It sure would have been horrible if he had shot somebody. And then they would be part of the story."

In 1998, a Seattle Times reporter called an Auburn bank and interviewed a man holding several people hostage. The hostages escaped unharmed, but the man shot himself and was hospitalized.

"Although we don't have a written policy against calling in to a hostage situation, I would hope our reporters recognize that in nearly any case, it's not a smart or journalistically sound thing to do," said Seattle Times Managing Editor David Boardman. "Potentially, it could have dire consequences."

Seattle Times reporters did not place any calls to the Sam Goody store on Sunday, but the newspaper's Web site posted stories from The Associated Press that cited the phone conversation with the hostage.

Sharon Pian Chan: 206-464-2958 or schan@seattletimes.com