BLOG: Behind the scenes of the hostage standoff

By: Valerie Boey

Tampa, Florida - In television news we’re taught to handle hostage situations carefully. We never want to put the SWAT team or hostages at risk. The incident that started Thursday afternoon and ended early Friday morning presented different challenges. The media was asked not to mention that there was even a hostage situation taking place. Apparently the gunman was threatening to shoot hostages if he saw anything on television about this.

While we’d never want to do anything to put people’s lives at risk, we couldn’t ignore the fact that part of a major highway was shut down. People were stuck in traffic. It took us about two hours just to get to the scene from St. Petersburg. Residents had a difficult time getting to their homes. When we arrived on scene, people kept asking us what was going on. We couldn’t tell them a whole lot, because we didn’t have all the information. It wasn’t being released. Many of them were scared. All they wanted were answers.

With that said, it was important to let viewers know something was going on. It was the responsible thing to do. But we also had a responsibility not to mention the hostage situation, not to put people’s lives at risk.

So moments before my 11 p.m. Thursday live shot, I felt sick to my stomach. What would happen if this man started shooting anyway? Even though we weren’t talking about the standoff, would he still get angry and take it out on the hostages? We kept our promise and didn't mention the standoff. But we reported on how residents and drivers were affected by this "dangerous situation."

After 16-years in television news, I’ve never had to deal with anything like this. I hope I never will again. But somehow I think this will happen. People are becoming more accustomed to seeing these incidents play out on television.

So maybe it’s time to re-evaluate how we handle these standoffs. After 10 hours, I’m so glad those hostages got out ok. But I’m even more relieved they weren’t injured because of something I said or didn't say.

During a Friday morning news conference, Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee thanked local news media for how we handled this situation in our reports.