A long time ago, I wrote about the conflict between citizenship and the modern self-conception of journalism. I was critical of journalists who felt that somehow they were above the shared obligations of citizenship, and that their obligation was only to, as Mike Wallace would put it, "...[whatever] story they were there to cover."
That issue is about to get an interesting wringing out, as it turns out that a courageous NY Times reporter was kidnapped at the Pakistan/Afghanistan border last fall, was held hostage by the Taliban, and recently - with amazing pluck and luck - escaped into the welcome arms of some nearby US soldiers.
Now that's a great story; not only an amazing drama in the kidnapping, and adventure in captivity, and now one with the happiest of endings.
But we weren't told it until the story was over. Joe Strupp in E & P, explains that all of the professional US media kept a lid on the story:
...you didn't hear about it for the past seven months, in the Times or any other mainstream news outlet. That is because Times editors sought what amounted to a news blackout, citing Rohde's safety.
Only a handful of Web sites and blogs--for more than half a year -- noted the incident, it remained out of mainstream news. It appears other news outlets that knew of the abduction adhered to the Times' request.That was in this case the right thing to do, the actors in the media felt. Strupp says:
Even when the Times won five Pulitzer Prizes in April, including one for international reporting in Pakistan and Afghanistan that essentially honored Rohde's among others, the paper had to bite its collective lip.
When E&P became aware of the kidnapping several months ago, Editor Greg Mitchell and I discussed the issue on several occasions, but declined to report. We talked to journalism ethicists and editors or reporters at other top outlets for guidance. When approached about the matter, several Times editors, including Executive Editor Bill Keller, were candid (off the record) about the situation, but with a request that we maintain a blackout.
As Keller said today on the Times' Web site, the paramount importance was for Rohde's' life and the belief among those aiding the paper, and his family, was that publicity could do more harm than good. "We decided to respect that advice, as we have in other kidnapping cases, and a number of other news organizations that learned of David's plight have done the same. We are enormously grateful for their support," he said in the story today.And Greg Mitchell adds, at Huffpo:
I wonder now if a great debate will break out over media ethics in not reporting a story involving one of their own when they so eagerly rush out piece about nearly everything else. I imagine some may claim that the blackout would not have held if a smaller paper, not the mighty New York Times, had been involved. Or is saving this life (actually two, there was a local reporter also snatched) self-evidently justification enough?The problem, of course, is that this was largely a matter of professional courtesy.
Because it's not the first time; when a CBC reporter was kidnapped last year, the media did the same thing:
Fung, who was on her second stint reporting in Afghanistan, was kidnapped from a refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul while there reporting for a story she was working on. She was taken to mountains west of the city and kept in a small cave for 28 days.Do a NY Times search for "kidnapped Afghanistan" and you'll find this January 2008 story about an American woman and her driver who'd just been kidnapped, this September 2008 story about an Afghan official who was kidnapped in Pakistan, a November 2008 story about a French aid worker who was kidnapped in Kabul.
News of her abduction was kept secret and the CBC and other media outlets did not make public the fact that she had been kidnapped. Upon her release, CBC publisher John Cruickshank said:"In the interest of Mellissa's safety and that of other working journalists in the region, on the advice of security experts, we made the decision to ask media colleagues not to publish news of her abduction. All of the efforts made by the security experts were focused on Mellissa's safe and timely release...We must put the safety of the victim ahead of our normal instinct for full transparency and disclosure."Some journalists, such as Michèle Ouimet, a columnist with Montreal's La Presse, questioned whether the Canadian media showed more solidarity toward Fung than it did for freelancer Amanda Lindhout, who was kidnapped in Somalia last summer. Ouimet wrote:"Journalists are the first to invoke the public's right to information, but they become awfully sensitive when it comes to one of their own."
Now that doesn't mean they cover every kidnapping -just that they cover some.
And that's not to mention the national security stories they happily and proudly ran (the Swift program, a perfectly legal program for tracking international financial transactions which they uncovered, among others).
I've got two massive problems with this.
The first, and obvious one, is covered in the Fallows piece I cite above, after Mike Wallace has explained that he'd stand by and roll tape as a guerilla force ambushed and wiped out an American patrol, because - in his exact words:
Didn't Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot? "No," Wallace said flatly and immediately. "You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!"A member of the US military responded:
A few minutes later Ogletree turned to George M. Connell, a Marine colonel in full uniform, jaw muscles flexing in anger, with stress on each word, Connell looked at the TV stars and said, "I feel utter . . . contempt. " Two days after this hypothetical episode, Connell Jennings or Wallace might be back with the American forces--and could be wounded by stray fire, as combat journalists often had been before. The instant that happened he said, they wouldn't be "just journalists" any more. Then they would drag them back, rather than leaving them to bleed to death on the battlefield. "We'll do it!" Connell said. "And that is what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get ... a couple of journalists." The last few words dripped with disgust.And I can imagine how, when Rohde's saw the uniforms of the US troops and knew that meant he was now safe, his heart must have lifted. And what's wrong with that, of course is that he wants - as the Col. Connell suggests - to be able to claim sanctuary from his countrymen. Now I don't know Rohde's work, and I'm not going to claim that he's remotely where Wallace claimed to be while sitting in the comfort of a videotaped seminar. But his institution is. And that's a problem to me. Because it was US soldiers who gave Rohde's sanctuary, not some mercenary force fighting in the name of the NY Times or international journalism.
The other problem is, if anything, more serious. And it is the simple fact that we are increasingly living in a society that plays by Ottoman rules; meaning that what the rules are depend - of course - on who you are. That's not something we will survive for long, and simply put, it needs to be exposed and stamped out anywhere we see it.
So I'm glad that the NY Times and journalists could sit on an exciting story to help save one of their own. In the future, will they do this to save some random civilian, or some US soldier?
-
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to put a good spin on this for the institution of journalism.
It speaks to me of a massive hypocritical double-standard based on a nearly complete lack of empathy for anyone and anything not an actual journalist. Yes, of course we should save our friends. No, of course we shouldn't save soldiers or anyone else we wouldn't feel obligated to go to the funeral of.
It also blows a hole in the profession's attempt to position itself as a nearly priestly, otherworldly, completely neutral institution. Like everyone else (priests of all religions in nearly all times most emphatically included) journalists look out for their own.
Eason Jordan alone demonstrates that. The story is more important than you are, but the journalists are more important than the story is.
Sigh!
This from the folks who want their profession to have the privilege of priests! Only when the story might harm one of their own can they think that restraint is justified. For the rest of us peons, it's the story and the by-line that matter over anything else.
The Wallace observation that it's the journalist's role to observe and report, not to get embroiled in events sounds correct to me. I don't have a problem with nature photograhpers filming the lion devouring prey and I don't have a problem with journalists reporting from dangerous places without becoming involved in events. The Marine's anger at Wallace's comment implicitely appears to assume that American journalists should be partisans for the American cause. I think this anger is misplaced and not understanding of the journalist's role.
I don't see anything improper in the NY Times not reporting this particular kidnapping. They don't have an obligation to report, or not report, any particular kidnapping. I also don't see anything nefarious about other media extending a "professional courtesey" in this case.
Does the media haved a duty to refrain from reporting kindnappings anytime they subjectively feel that it might be safer for the vicitim not to shed light on a case? I believe not. First, in general, the judgment about the effect of a news story in the international press on the kidnappers and kidnapped seems pretty speculative. Second, and more fundamentally, I don't think this kind of armchair psychology is what the press should be engaged in.
Does what gets reported, when, and how, depend on who knows whom, and is it influenced by the journalists own views, hopes, and fears? Of course. But that is just life; it's not the end of the Republic.
Roland Nikles
Wallace's position - that its OK to allow a patrol of US soldiers to be ambushed in the name of journalistic integrity - is morally bankrupt. I should like to see that reporter try to justify his position afterward to the mother or wife of one of the soldiers of that patrol.
But I suppose that wouldn't be considered an important story, since it doesn't involve journalists dying or getting kidnapped. That double-standard attitude is one reason the news media is held in such low repute today: if it bleeds it leads, unless its one of their fellow Priests To Truth in trouble, then another standard applies.
The whole idea of a neutral, impartial journalistic class is very Western. That's one reason why journalists (and reporters, for that matter) are prime targets for jihadists: in the Caliphate, there is no place for the media. Journalists need to consider that they are on a side, even if they want to self-delude that they aren't.
The first American death in the Afghanistan War was Michael Spann. He was the CIA agent who was at the prison fort outside of Mazar-i-Sharif when the Taliban prisoners launched an attack and took over the fort. Before his death had been confirmed, Spann's parents asked the MSM to refrain from publicizing the fact that Spann was a CIA agent because it would have put Spann's life at risk. The MSM, however, refused to do this.
For many years it has been apparent that the MSM has one set of rules for themselves and an entirely different set for everyone else. I have nothing but contempt them and I pray every day that their industry will die a swift death.
Roland,
I could agree with either half of your position, but really not both at the same time. They just don't seem compatible to me. If you have no moral duty to help a soldier-- if the coverage of the story is a higher moral imperative than a soldier's safety, is what we're saying-- then one of the following things seems to be true. Either,
1) The story is also a higher moral imperative than a reporter's safety, or
2) A reporter's safety is a higher moral imperative than a story, which means a reporter's safety is also a higher moral imperative than a solider's safety, or
At least, those are the choices assuming there's any ethical and moral thought process going on, here. I would invite Wallace to explain which one that is.
(And even so, in practice, I'm not keen on the first half of the argument, if only because the US tends not to fight against people where freedom of the press is respected as it is here, and so even if free reportage is the highest moral imperative, not aiding US soldiers seems to be a bad choice in the long run anyway. But leaving that aside, in principle I can accept both halves of your argument... just not both at the same time.)
This need not be nefarious, nor the end of the Republic. But it certainly qualifies in my mind as scummy, self-centered, and self-privileged.
As I was reading my Sunday newspaper (The Flint Journal), I saw a short item about the reporter's abduction. For some strange reason, the person who edited the piece included a reference to the news services' agreement to not mention they had adhered to the NYT's request that no mention be made of the kidnapping.
Had I been a lesser man, my skull would have exploded. The New York Times -- the newspaper that couldn't wait to expose the tactics used by the U.S. to battle the terrorist monsters who threaten our country, vis-a-vis tracking the terrorists' money trails, among other stories to undercut the battle against terrorism -- had relied on deceit and deception to keep its man safe.
As a retired professional in the mainstream/ lamestream media (a former reporter and copy editor), I cannot subscribe to the proposition that a reporter is a special person who wears a halo above his/her head. Journalists are supposed to report the story, not make or shape the results that he or she prefer.
The performance of America's media has been disgraceful at best and treasonous at worst. My two cents worth.
Roland:
A reporter is working on a story about people eating less healthily because of the recession. He's in a "greasy spoon" where there's only one diner, a man who's given permission for the reporter to use his story and photograph him.
Suddenly the other guy grabs his throat, turns blue and is apparently choking.
Does the reporter throw down his camera and rush to save the man? Or does he simply report on how he died?
Jeanne
The problem is too many journalists don't bother with "journaling". They aspire to be politicians, or, even better, The Power Behind The Throne.
If they can take a step towards ending a war they disagree with by getting good shots of Americans getting killed, they'd definitely choose this over "snitching" on the "bad guys" (that they implicitly support versus the American troops fighting the "unjust war").
Of course, were this to happen in real life, that same bunch of bad guys may well overrun the journalists' position, which Would Be Bad, but would make him "part of the story".
A Taliban-affiliated group kidnaps a Westerner in Afghanistan (journalist or aid worker).
The Taliban obviously knows what they have done, and they have a well-oiled machine for getting this news publicized in the Western press... if they want to.
So the decision to keep Rohde's abduction hidden wasn't really the NYT's to make. The Times could only take this step so long as the Taliban believed that silence was in their best interest, too.
I am not saying that I understand the Taliban's decision-making process, or that they correctly identified their self-interest. Just that the way that varied interests align in kidnapping cases gets hellish and complicated. In this case, consider the points of view of the abductees, their families, other possible ransom-payers (e.g. the NYT), the military, the actual kidnappers, and the kidnappers' umbrella organization.
Either before or after Rohde's escape, should we count on the Times for complete and insightful analysis of these issues?
By the way, it was Rohde and journalist Tahir Ludin and driver Asadullah Mangal who were kidnapped.
Mangal is apparently still in captivity.
Sounds like a good jumping off point for an Op-Ed in the Times, titled "All Animals Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others." Who should write it: Mike Wallace or Bill Keller?