This post was written by Gagan Biyani.
Earlier last week, New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped from a Taliban prison. He had been a Taliban hostage for the last seven months, but the general public had absolutely no clue. In a joint effort by The New York Times and Wikipedia, the story was kept quiet until his daring escape.
In November 2008, Rohde was captured and held hostage by the Taliban, along with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal. But until he managed to escape, most of the general public had absolutely no clue. To prevent Rohde’s value in the eyes of his captors from rising, the New York Times kept more than 35 major news organizations from reporting on the story. They believed that the publicity from reporting his capture would inflate the value of Rohde’s life, increasing the difficulty of negotiating for Rohde’s release. Keeping 35 news organizations quiet was actually not the hard part – but staving off Wikipedia users from publishing the news? That was a bit trickier.
Through an elaborate and ongoing battle between Wikipedia editors and an anonymous contributor from Florida, the New York Times and the Wikipedia Foundation managed to keep the story quiet. For seven months, Wikipedia editors were in a constant back-and-forth with this user to delete news of Rohde’s capture off of the site. They were unable to contact the user directly, as s/he was anonymously posting on Wikipedia, and thus could not explain to the user why they were trying to keep the news quiet. Infuriated, the user threw insults at the editors who were deleting his addition, and blindly continued their futile fight.
All of this ended when Rohde and Ludin managed to climb over a wall and escape the Taliban’s clenches. In an interesting twist, the driver chose to join the Taliban and thus stayed behind, according to Rohde. This is a truly inspiring story, and the efforts of the Wikipedia editors and the New York Times are beyond laudable. In a recent tweet, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said that preventing the news from breaking may have saved his life. Regardless of the merits of this comment, it made Rohde’s escape more likely, and was a downright impressive feat of coordination by all parties involved.
Bravo to you. Fantastic thinking, efforts, consideration and humanity.
It is too bad that the Florida posting person can not be held accountable for adding unnecessary danger to this situation.
The media takes a lot of heat about having no consideration for its impact. It is nice to see that they can think of the bigger picture in the interest of doing something truly helpful.
You can’t really hold him/her accountable for trying to break a new about that. If he knew about the story, that means he is somebody close enough to the family/coworkers.
And I’m pretty sure he/she would have understand why they were doing that. And how who you react if somebody close to you was help hostage, and nobody talked about it?
Unless you can really think about it, you would probably try the world to know.
But because they had the IP, they could have asked the ISP to send an email to the user and explain why their entries were deleted.
ISP: That is true. I doubt however that wikipedia editors are tech savvy enough to get that idea.
You know, this is actually well and good, but does this make you realize how easy it is to keep things quiet? This story should make you finally realize that media censorship and bias is very real in this country, even on the internet. There are only small enclaves of free speech left, and even those are constantly under attack. http://anonboard.com is a good example of that.
Why did the driver join the Taliban? What’s his problem anyway?
Maybe he thought that escaping would lead to a life of just more of driving people around. I can kinda see why he would hang back.
There’s a known psychological response to abduction where the captive begins to sympathise with the captors http://en.wikip...ckholm_syndrome
What? Held accountable for telling the truth? It should be wikipedia that’s held accountable. Some nytimes chief intervening on Wikipedia, heh. What if it had been some blogger out there captured or even a journalist from another paper not the nytimes? It would have been on wikipedia if had been a notable enough individual. That nytimes article incredibly biased. The man standing up to jimbo and his cronies is in the right.
Very disconcerting to see the Wikipedia founder and other publications keeping the truth away from the citizenry.
I like Wikipedia, but how can it ever be trusted again if they are willing to manipulate postings to suit?
What next will they ‘pick and choose’ to manipulate?
Bjorn and 1984 – wow. The stupidity of both of you amazes me.
Sean, it’s a values judgement, not an intellectual one
Should humanity be top of all in civilisation? especially when such request was raised by the employer NyTimes which care for the employee’s life.
You don’t want to sacrifice David’s life for your value of telling the truth.
I don’t think that their silence was “beyond laudable”; I consider it to be well within the bounds of simple human decency.
You’re totally right – it wasn’t their silence that was beyond laudable. It was their efforts to keep David Rohde’s Wikipedia page silent, despite a user relentlessly trying to break the story.
I have no problem with the NYT’s difficult decision to suppress information on the capture with the *major* exception that I feel they need to be consistent in their policy, or at least help us better understand what was so different here.
For instance, on Jan 27, the NYT had no problem reporting on the kidnapping of an American in Afghanistan (http://www.nyti...a/27afghan.html). On February 3rd 2009, they had no problem reporting on the abduction of an American U.N. official (http://www.nyti...ia/03pstan.html in Pakistan.)
They also had no problem holding stories that the US military says compromises our security and/or places armed forces in real jeopardy.
Are they being consistent here? Are they somehow deciding that one of their own employees’ safety is somehow more valuable than others? I imagine that many, many parents/siblings/government-officials/etc. have pleaded with the NYT in the past to sit on a story… what was their decision then?
Were the others kidnapped friends of the guys there? Ah, no? hmmm…..
Excellent points. In my opinion, both the NYT and Wikipedia are only too willing to preen themselves as principled free press acolytes — so long as reality doesn’t intrude on their interests.
Hmm, anything else they aren’t reporting? or aren’t reporting as much as they should be?
35 organizations, more likely than not, all owned by the same small handful of people. Real hard…
i agree great point made on your part. what’s the times take on this techchrunch. was the government involved or not?
Excellent point.
NYT engages in selective journalism. They are the first to break a story if they feel it will get them a Pulitzer, regardless of the national security consequences.
But if a story will hurt one of their lapdogs, they will spike it.
Case in point, voter fraud at ACORN.
“A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.””
(http://thebulle...8e547489394.txt)
Stop patting the NYT on the back and ask the bigger question, is it truly reporting “All the News That’s Fit to Print”, or is it simply “All the news we want to report to make us look good.”
So in the ACORN case the decision was not to report something that was not really a big deal because there were loads of misinformed people who would think it was a big deal. ACORN was not involved in voter fraud. ACORN itself flagged all ballots it suspected as fraudulent before it submitted them. They had to submit the fraudulent ballots by law.
You could say this is suppressing the news, or you could say it’s not printing a non-story, like any number of other non-stories they don’t print. Since there are several so-called news organizations out there aggressively spreading misinformation, the NYTimes and other organizations who have an interest in truth perhaps have to be careful not to put out this unimportant information that can easily be turned into lies and innuendo. It could have been a “game-changer,” but only in the same way printing a picture of McCain with his dark-skinned daughter the day before the South Carolina primary in 2000 could have had a huge effect. For those skeptical about the misinformation spread by the Rove smear-polls, it might have turned them against McCain. (Not that the smears weren’t already enough to bring him down). What I’m saying is, newspapers do not have to print every possible fact in the world.
Did the victim’s family/friends or the police ask the media not to report it? this is crucial
The NY Times reports on stories related to national security all the time that endanger the lives of American operatives and servicemen, in certain cases after the State Department has specifically requested that they not release stories due to their sensitive nature and the possibility of people getting killed. When they do that, they call it “journalistic integrity”. However, when the person at risk is one of their own, withholding the information is “laudable”. Go figure.
wow. i love this story.
I wonder if the Times would have been so quick to supress the “public’s right to know” if the request had originated from the Bush Administration.
While I am glad that Rohde was able to escape, let’s not paint the NYT as some sort of noble enterprise. They were simply protecting one of their own– it is doubtful that they have ever extended that “common human decency” to a non-employee.
They most likely wouldn’t as mentioned by “Steve Murch” above
Amen!
Im sure after a NY Times exhausted background check, they discovered he was a Democrat supporter thus he was protected.
The Times has been known to shout from the mountain tops any secret information known regarding military movements or intelligence.
Such as the Feb 22 report that US special forces was helping Pakistan train to fight taliban and al-qaeda (strengthening the opponents of the moderate govt) or releasing the name of the CIA agent who interrogated Khalid Sheik Mohammed thus putting his family in danger.
Im happy that this man is alive and well due to the work of the Times and Wikipedia but I loathe the Times for their past transgressions.
What are you talking about… what does this have to do with politics? Are you still mad about the election?
It’s pretty simple, Erick is saying that the NYT valued the life of their reporter over the value of the report, but when it comes to military they value the report over the life of the soldier.
It’s not a political or election-based opinion.
The NYT isn’t altruistic because they’ve valued a report over the safety of others plenty before.
Just for the sake of clarification while we update the backend, this post was written by Gagan Biyani.
I’d wash my hands of it too. NY Times does something decent… Bra-frickin-vo
this is really impressive… but shouldn’t they then do the same for everyone captured?
Wow, great story. I bet someone is already writing the screenplay.
I agree with Erick 100%.
The Times will protect one of their own, but not an American soldier- who in turn protects the Times.
regretmyvote.com
Unfortunately, if the person trying to post that story on Wikipedia had used Twitter instead, the news would probably have been out within hours. It might not be possible to keep something like that quiet the next time.
Or 4chan. Just spam the story on /b/, with an intro that scientologists are to blame.
Good point, I guess social media can be bad if you don’t know what you are talking about, who knows, maybe they even contacted twitter.
on social media, you can make people believe anything.
Within an hour, a policeman disguised as the “real” reporter could appear on twitter claiming he was having a vacation in bahamas.
Thankfully people don’t blindly trust twitter
Why is the Times being praised here? Shouldn’t this be the expected response to this type of situation? The answer is yes, but apparently only if the victim contributes to the profitability of the Times, and certainly not if the person is a member of the armed forces. Not surprisingly this seems to have been a business decision.
And what would the Times say if it found out about another news outlet attempting to suppress free speech online (regardless of the intentions or reasoning)? They’d be calling for someone’s head.
Maybe now that the paper has been involved in such a situation it will show some restraint and common decency when it comes to protecting the lives of our military men and women. More likely, and sadly, it won’t.
Great news. It felt like I was reading some thriller novel. Hats off to The New York Times and Wikipedia Editors for their efforts and hard work.
The blatant hypocrisy in this story is one of the reasons the New York Times is becoming less and less important when discussing influential media. The Times has had no problems releasing secret information when it has served their liberal editorial slant.
While this is a nice, feel good story that happens to have a happy ending, ignoring the Times’ past reporting practices is a huge disservice to your readers. Put the story in context, or don’t report it at all.
That’s a bit of a stretch. None of us know how much “secret” information the NYTimes gets. For all you know, they sit on stories every day for the sake of national security or, as in this case, someone’s personal safety. The only time we know is when they do leak secret information, and there are two reasons for this that haven’t been discussed in the comments thus far:
1. They knew someone else was going to break the story anyways.
2. They believed the “secret” information was going to result in actual harm.
Obviously, it is possible that the New York Times chooses to publish some secret information unwisely, but I think it is a bit of a stretch to go from that argument to saying that we should’ve included that accusation in the story.
You just made my point for me. Someone else (Wikipedia) was breaking the story. I avoid the site like the plague, but I’d be pretty confident that they are probably breaking their editorial policies by constantly deleting the user’s entries. That is actually the bigger story, that a supposed ‘open’ database is subject to influence from an outside media company.
Secondly, there weren’t concerned about the ‘actual’ harm to other kidnapping victims in the area as pointed out by other posters. So that should be part of the story, why they treated one of their own employees differently from other victims in the region.
wow, what a story. great to hear he returned safely
Agenda driven ‘colouring’/censoring and blanking of edits has happened before on wikipedia. The level of bureaucratisation that Wikipedia has reached, now sticky questions on the policy implications of such a participation by wikipedia will arise. I seriously doubt that the effort was sooo important in the reporter’s life, but one can never be too cautious about such things….
The hypocrisy is definitely pretty ripe with this story.
* 1/27/08: “American Woman is Kidnapped In Afghanistan” (http://www.nyti...a/27afghan.html)
* 9/28/07: “4 Red Cross Workers Kidnapped in Afghanistan” (http://query.ny...75AC0A9619C8B63)
* 9/23/08: “Afghan Official Kidnapped In Pakistan” (http://www.nyti...ia/23pstan.html)
* Numerous articles that compromised ongoing military operations and/or national security (various)
etc.
I think that sitting on a story to protect a human life is completely justifiable. It’s a very difficult call either way.
BUT I think the NYTimes needs to take a close look at their policy here and help us laymen understand why this case was any different than other cases. How many kidnapping stories did they publish anyway, despite the pleas of family/police/FBI/military/government officials/etc.?
Was it just that it was a NYTimes employee this time?
I agree with Steve, special handling for a special employee, what about all the other kidnap stories we here about?
Shouldn’t they have all been kept quiet as well to save those peoples lives?
woa… some of you guys drink a lot of haterade…
seriously. good job to wiki and nyt.
Look at it from their point of view. Put yourself in their seat, imagine you had a job there fro the last few years. It took me about 10-15 minutes to just imagine a few things. Just think of all the stories they edit, delete, highlight. You think the editor’s job is just to say Yes/No? Some of these guys get real bombs of stories, but then they get phone calls. That happens too. Sometimes the job of the editor is the filthiest in the world. Sometimes he can do good things. And most of the time, he has to make money by hook or by crook.
Imagine more, understand more. Read up the lives of reporters – the glorified ones and the hated ones. The living and the dead well-known ones. Then you see the bigger picture.
While this is a fully heartwarming story, kudos to NYT and Wikipedia team, how many more stories can be “tweaked” for the better, so that deadly harm does not result. For instance, highlighting the number of accident and gun deaths shown against the number of soldiers deaths?
You can publish that but more people die in routine things than in terrorist attacks. what about the silence there?
Is that good silence?
I think it comes down to a per-case basis. Because things are so fluid today that you cannot make rules. In this case, therefore, full credit to NYT and Wikipedia. Great job.
What i want to add is that showing empathy for other humans should happen more often – for example, silence on Darfur is a crime if you are a true journalist. It is a blot on your integrity and conscience, that wont go away.
I think i’ve written enough. I’ll shut up.
Gary, I don’t hate the Times.
I’m just scratching my head on this.
Can *you* answer the question? What makes this kidnapping any different than the others?
honestly? no. can’t answer.
but the amount of negativity around what could be a first of its kind of collaboration is just upsetting.
If I was the reported and I read this page I’d comment “jee… thanks for wanting me dead guys”
… and I’m not a hippie… I just don’t think this particular article is the forum for this discussion.
As I said, I don’t fault them for holding the story.
I cannot say what I’d do myself if I were the editor of the NYT. Very, very tough call.
BUT, they need to help those of us in the peanut gallery (who don’t own a major media outlet) understand what is their basis for saying that it’s OK to report on other kidnappings, other life-jeapordizing-secrets, etc., while at the same time vital to protect this particular story. What makes one story worthy of holding, and other stories OK to print?
And if the answer is that there’s one standard if it’s an employee/reporter, and another if it’s just any old other human being like most of us, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.
They worked with over 40 major media outlets to keep the lid on this story. I’m not saying that that’s a terrible thing if it did in fact help save the two lives. (As I write below, there’s actually a third life in danger stemming from the same kidnapping, but he’s not a NYT employee, so I guess it was OK for them to print it.)
I’m delighted that the pulitzer-prize-winning NYT reporter is alive and free, along with his colleague. That’s fantastic news.
At the same time, I’m very concerned that there appears to be a double standard here — perhaps not a “Thin Blue Line” but a “Thin Grey Line” at the Old Grey Lady, and I don’t see anyone in the major media outlets picking up on this angle and wanting to talk about it.
I’m astonished by all the “I don’t don’t see what is different about this kidnapping/this story” posts. First, the Times has held back innumerable stories and pieces of information during its existence at the request of governments, including the GWB administration, during its history, in order not to put lives in danger. The newspaper probably has to make calls like this hundreds of times every year, and, of course, we generally don’t hear anything about the stories/information not released. These decisions are often not easy, and you can’t comply with every government call for secrecy since government types would keep the color of their toenail polish classified if they could. And certainly mistakes are made.
Second, what’s special about this case is that it’s clear now that these terrorists have made specific targets of journalists, and it’s also clear now, after the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, that trying to publicly pressure these kidnappers to release journalists held as hostages puts those hostages in more danger and encourages the terrorists to try and take more journalists hostage. The US has never had to deal with terrorists like this before; previous generations of terrorists, such as the PLO and its offshoots, were sensitive to public pressure in many hostage situations, because they were trying to advance their cause partly by appealing to public opinion. And they tended not to target journalists, because journalists provided them with a way to spread their message. The Taliban and their associates are different. They aren’t looking to earn Western support. They don’t believe that having any Western reporters in their countries provides any benefit. And they’ve made journalists targets because they know think that kidnapping journalists will get more attention and that, in general, journalists often work for Western corporations they might be able to successfully blackmail for cash. And the downside of kidnapping journalists is that they have to settle for ridding their country of one more journalist, which is a victory for them in and of itself
I can kind of sympathize with those who believe that information should not be kept from the public regardless of the consequences. But those who can’t see what makes this case different just don’t want to look.
PS – On a different note, it is funny to see that people pop up arguing that the New York Times is no longer relevant. The Times now is more widely read and more influential than it has been at any previous point in its history. Even if you don’t read the Times at all, it’s impossible to escape its influence in the blogosphere. Its financial problems are serious and what importance it will have in the future is open to question, but anybody who doesn’t see that the net the growth net and the collapse of much of the mainstream media has enabled the Times to greatly expand its influence is living in an alternate dimension. The Times’ mystical status has probably declined, but one of the reason the Times got labeled the “paper of record” is that 40 years ago, it published many stories of international and national importance that were so boring that absolutely no one read them beyond the editor and the government official quoted in the story.
Sorry Greg but I have to call B.S. here.
You write “what’s special about this case is that it’s clear now that these terrorists have made specific targets of journalists”
The Taliban and Al Qaeda have been very clear that they target *all* westerners.
Journalists are certainly a high value target, but their *lives* are of equal value to other citizens.
As just one example, Red Cross Workers have been kidnapped, and the NYTimes further jeapordized their lives by reporting it (http://query.ny...75AC0A9619C8B63).
The NYTimes had no problem reporting on the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, and he’s a journalist. (Just not a NYTimes employee.)
The NYTimes has repeatedly been asked in the past not to detail certain military plans because it would jeapordize an ongoing operation, yet they frequently ignore these requests.
Sure seems hypocritical to me.
This turn of events needs its own Wikipedia entry.
This is great. It’s great to see that the NY Times can put human interest in front of journalistic machismo. If only they cared for soldiers as much as they do for other reporters….
This actually could have backfired. If Rhodes had little perceived value, they might have just shot him to keep from incurring the costs of guarding and feeding him.
Moreover, given how the events unfolded, the silence had no effect on the outcome. It doesn’t seem that they were able to buy him out of captivity at a discount… He escaped.
And by the way, there’s an interesting epilogue to this story.
The NYT reporter who heroically (and thankfully!) escaped was captured with another person.
That person did *not* escape. That person was not a NYT employee, but he’s also a human being. As far as I know, he’s still being held by his captors.
So why does the NYT feel it’s OK to go public?
Correction — from the article below, it appears he was captured with not one but *two* other people (his driver and a colleague named Ludin). Ludin and Rohde did escape (thankfully), but the driver did not, and is presumably still being held by the captors.
So the driver’s still in danger, but apparently he’s not a NYT employee, because the NYT feels free to report now. (Or, at the very least, that’s the conclusion that cynics are now led to believe.)
One cannot help but conclude that it pays to be at the helm of a major news organization.
http://nymag.co...ws/media/57635/
Huh. I don’t know about “one”, but I would conclude that you did not read the techcrunch article above, which clearly explains that the driver remained behind to join the Taliban.
aha! Fair enough. I stand completely corrected on the epilogue. I had read several articles about this event last week, prior to the TechCrunch story, and none of them had mentioned that the driver apparently joined (or stayed with) the Taliban.
It still doesn’t change the premise of my question, however. While I am extremely happy to see that they escaped to freedom, and I don’t fault the NYT for keeping a lid on *this* story, I DO fault them greatly for an apparent policy that favors employees/reporters in matters of life and death.
The Wikipedia editors couldn’t just lock the article?
I wonder if it would have been the case if it was not “one of thier own” …
I’d be very interested to know who the person in Fla was and how they acquired the information.
Also, I agree with others above regarding the strange policy of the NYTimes.
Can I see a movie on this?
I am not surprise because most than often, the truth will never or hardly prevail. So do this case. What is important to me is the reporter is safety.
I think this effort of suppressing information for a higher cause is truly laudable and an example of responsible journalism. It would be great if the press / blogosphere could be as responsible when the affected party is not one of their own. Unfortunately, it’s more likely that if the govt. were to encourage the press to not report such a story, they would be accused of trying to suppress the right of people to know by the very same folk commending the NYT.
Was this ‘crowd-sourced’ from Hacker News?
http://news.yco.../item?id=678330
The interesting question here is that would have happened if the journalist was not from NYT but from a smaller newspaper? Would it be possible then to keep the story from the papers?
NYT has tremendous clout in the news world. It could convince other papers from reporting the news. But not every newspaper has the clout to pull off such a move.
Wonder what would’ve happened then..
What a bunch of hypocrites. I have friends working over there who are at risk of being kidnapped all the time. If they got kidnapped, you can bet that NYT reporters would be door-stopping their family. All in the name of the “Public’s right to know”.
Thankfully most reporters know nada as they just rewrite press releases or aggregate from other news sources so they can’t cause too much damage.
So why not keep this story quiet as well. Other than PR it serves no purpose. It seems it will just complicate the next abductee. Now the hostage takers will start thinking that he or she may be really important if no news of him or her has been leaked. The UK has the DA-Notice system for such events and would carry on after the event as well.
http://www.dnotice.org.uk/
As much as I’m glad with Rohde escaping from the Taliban, I really hate this story.
NYT built a fictitious story on top of the man back and on the expense of Wikipedia creditability.
Be assure that the Taliban knew exactly who they’re having, they don’t need Wikipedia to tell them that.
Newspapers manipulating readers with non-stories is not something new, but breaking Wikipedia credebility, for something that doesn’t make sense, is really the disturbing part of that story.
How Wikipedia editors fallen to that trap?
Now, as much as I see us as the good side, and Taliban as the bad side, I don’t see how’s that Wikipedia’s business.
Would they do the same for a Pakistani policeman? for an Israeli soldier? for a French tourist?
And even beyond that, would they do that for a Talibani being captured and tortured by Pakistan, for example?
Since when Wikipedia choose who’s good and who’s bad?
Yes. That’s one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that Jimmy Wales had hundreds of ways at his disposal to keep this information from getting out. He could have frozen the page completely via an Office Action. He could have simply removed it.
Better yet, he could have caused it to seem that there was some sort of unresolved formatting glitch. This would have stopped this whole back-and-forth bullshit cold.
Of course it would have also made Wikipedia look bad. Temporarily. Can’t have that, so instead of sucking it up and taking the heat caused by their own internal secret decision, they villanized some editor doing EXACTLY what a good Wikipedia editor should be doing – adding properly sourced material to an article.
Clap.
Clap.
Clap.
Way to go, Jimbo. I applaud your intent. I disdain your method.
So, media makes people alive or sends to death?
Goes to prove Wikipedia can still be manipulated and is inaccurate.
Operation Mockingbird…check it out http://en.wikip...ion_Mockingbird
Though I only went back a few hundred edits, I see no evidence in this article’s history that there is anything being covered up about this story in any sort of wholesale manner. Can you clarify how this relates to the current discussion?
This sets a clear precedent for NY Times and Wikipedia next time anybody is in a similar situation.
I agree, and it’s bad policy. Who will report on the reporters?
Is David Rohde a Democrat?
yes.
What about Daniel Pearl? Was any updates from the NYT “frozen” to help with his rescue?
No.
Wonder what was Pearl’s political affiliation…
JUST GOES TO SHOW YOU HOW EASILY MEDIA INSTITUTIONS CAN COLLABORATE TO CONTROL THE NEWS WE RECEIVE, EVEN SOURCES LIKE WIKIPEDIA. THIS IS BETTER THAN CENSORSHIP.
I find it scary how many people are perfectly fine with the media distorting the truth as it fits their needs/desires.
I guess we’ve all gotten well past the point where we expect the media to be unbiased and honest but that doesn’t mean I can’t be unhappy with the situation.
Frankly, this story works as an uplifting piece because of the outcome. Had the reporter died at the end of this struggle then the Times could be held accountable for keeping a lid on his capture. It is also possible that publicizing his capture would have allowed more us to marshall more resources on his behalf. Media censorship is not cause for celebration.
ABSOLUTE HOGWASH – the NYT and other media outlets bleat to the high heavens when a soldier or marine is captured, but bend the rules when it is one of their own.
Laudable? Hardly, more apropos would be disgusting hypocrisy.
“Wikipedia is not censored”, well looking at this story it is!
“We cannot anticipate every bad idea any one of us might have” well having administrators not allow postings of truthful content is a bad idea.
Hence the truth is out; almost all you read anywhere is manipulated or spun! There is no place where true freedom of expression is tolerated. We all live in controlled environments.
Wikipedia has lost it’s facade of high ideals and the truth is that we the public are the poorer for it. We hoped in our millions in perennial hope for something better that being a sheep.
But here we are just sheep, being manipulated, monitored and controlled.
The internet was a good hope for freedom but it is slowly being soured by Governments everywhere, I am not sure if we will ever have real freedom, but I for one applaud Anonymous from Florida, for at least trying to get his voice heard
A great article here proving that Wikipedia is manipulated and controlled, in regards to information on naked short selling of shares in the financial markets:
http://www.deep...self-home-test/
So it will be now the policy of 37 major news organizations not to report kidnappings of journalists abroad? What if the kidnappers also change their policies by killing ‘no value’ hostages, who will be responsible for suppressing the truth?
Is this the same NY Times that compromised national security by illegally and unethically leaking stories about the fed govt programs to track suspicious terrorist activities? Let’s see, we’ll hold news stories to save the skin of one of our own reporters but we will (in a heartbeat), compromise the safety of U.S. citizens by printing anything we can that promotes our agenda. Hmmm, not the kind of values I would want to teach my children. But hey, we’re the NY Times and we decide what’s good for the country.
What really happened is somebody decided holding him wasn’t worth a Shiite, Sunni.