Wikipedia Censored To Protect Captive Reporter 414
AI writes with a story from the NY Times about a 7-month-long effort, largely successful, to keep news of a Times reporter's kidnapping off of Wikipedia. The Christian Science Monitor, the reporter David Rohde's previous employer, takes a harder look at the issues of censorship and news blackout, linking to several blogs critical of Wikipedia's actions. Rohde escaped from a Taliban compound, along with his translator, on Saturday. "For seven months, The New York Times managed to keep out of the news the fact that one of its reporters, David Rohde, had been kidnapped by the Taliban. But that was pretty straightforward compared with keeping it off Wikipedia. ... A dozen times, user-editors posted word of the kidnapping on Wikipedia's page on Mr. Rohde, only to have it erased. Several times the page was frozen, preventing further editing — a convoluted game of cat-and-mouse that clearly angered the people who were trying to spread the information of the kidnapping... The sanitizing was a team effort, led by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, along with Wikipedia administrators and people at The Times."
why (Score:2, Interesting)
what was the purpose of censoring the information? was it in order to not give the Taliban any news time or was it an attempt to hide the hideous things the Taliban does in an effort to not bolster cries to rid us of them once and for all?
It seems to me that this is more political then anything.
Re:Double Standard (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder how many of those public statements about kidnaps are in the new because parents, family members or friends push for it to be there while the more kidnap savvy reporters know it will only hurt their efforts for safe release/escape of their friend.
Re:the blackout was a good idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Amnesty saves captives' lives by the very principle of spreading information of their capture, and has been doing so for a very long time. I suspect this has little to do with saving the captive's life, and more to do with a newspaper deciding it knows how to control the media, and probably should for their employee/friend's sake, without taking the time to think about whether it's actually the right course of action. Ironic for a newspaper to believe in censoring information.
Just thought I'd ask. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I have no problem with this (Score:3, Interesting)
What defines 'breaking news'?
Obama was listed on Wikipedia as "sworn in" two minutes after he took the oath of office. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barack_Obama&oldid=265312210 [wikipedia.org]
This guy was kidnapped for 7 months, and it was still considered breaking news at that point?
Re:To keep him alive. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, while I'm not sure it's applicable to this incident, I do remember a few years back when news and details about a Canadian aid worker who was kidnapped was kept quiet. In that particular case, it was because he had a husband back home waiting for him... They decided that it was better to suppress the information than risk the taliban beheading him for no reason other than he was gay.
It could also have been because they didn't want him to become a celebrity. They may have felt that he was kidnapped in the hopes of making headlines, and getting publicity for their cause. Deny them that publicity, and eventually they might give up and let him go.
*shrugs* we don't know at the moment, and we may never know, but there's two very good reasons to suppress the information.
Re:This was not censorship. (Score:1, Interesting)
Hmm, not sure where you got your definition, but dictionary.com, says:
"an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds"
Seems like censorship to me.
Re:the blackout was a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just thought I'd ask. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hypocrites (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:the blackout was a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
That night Churchill cancelled his scheduled trip out of london and remained in the city....
Re:newspapers capable and willing to censor (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, when the choice comes down to democracy vs safety, I choose democracy.
It's easy to choose between someone else's safety and your perceived rights within a democracy. (NOte that I still don't see how you have a "right" to this information; in the same way you don't have a "right" to information about troop movements.)
But here, the problem is a double standard: newspapers keeping information about a kidnapped reporter quiet, while reporting on many other hostages.
Well, that's the thing - as I've mentioned elsewhere, I've been looking for cases where the newspaper is reporting on other hostages and the act of reporting on them places them in further danger, and I am coming up blank. As a result, I'm not seeing the double standard.
Re:the blackout was a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
All of which is so easy to say when neither you nor anyone you love stands to be the person who suffers most.
Would you be in such a rush to publish if it were your wife, son, daughter, mother, father or whatever? Knowing that you'd be giving the publicity to actual terrorists and likely signing the death warrant of your loved one?
I'd bet a vast amount of money that you'd cave on your principles, especially when strict adherence to them gives the kidnappers precisely what they want.
Get off your soapbox and consider the situation here. Really think about exactly how much you would personally sacrifice if you were involved in this.
Re:the blackout was a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple answer: it never could be [wikitruth.info].
Re:I have no problem with this (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe "breaking news" means you are the first to report the news story, i.e. "break" that story. In the case of Obama's inauguration, its moot because everyone knew about it at the same time - it was a scheduled event.
Wikipedia, an encyclopedia (which is generally a secondary or tertiary source), cannot report on events like a news source does. It has to cite a news source and establish that the news source has been reliable in the past and can be trusted. This is often a slow process.
Re:To keep him alive. (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you have an example of anything ever written in any part of the world that could be considered a unbiased source
Sure, it's 77 degrees (F) at 11:41 pm and the sun has set for the day here.
IMHO this is a case where the means (temporary suppression of information) totally justified the end (a live reporter)
Yes, the ends justified the means, and all it cost was the last of Wikipedia's integrity.
Re:the blackout was a good idea (Score:1, Interesting)
This is all very convincing, and I nearly swallowed NYT's argument [washingtonpost.com] myself, until I realized, that it could have (should have?) been applied to some inflammatory things they did publish earlier.
The Abu Ghraib abuse photos are the most obvious example — imagine NYT and wire-agencies respecting a Bush administration's request not to publish them so as not to "negatively affect" the US military's mission — and cost a lot of lives...
What else are the media and Wikipedia valiantly suppressing right now for the "greater good"?..