You know what I find interesting about this story of the recent kidnapping by terrorists in Iraq?? The fact that the newspaper where the victim worked requested all the other major media outlets to keep the kidnapping and even the victims name a secret…..and they did:
The abduction of a Christian Science Monitor reporter in Iraq on Saturday was not disclosed by major U.S. media outlets for nearly two days after the Monitor requested that the incident, and the reporter’s name and affiliation, be withheld. A translator was killed in the incident and the reporter, now identified by the Monitor as Jill Carroll, is still being held.
Numerous foreign news outlets and several leading wire services disclosed the incident–and in a few cases, the reporter’s name. Such stories did not appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and other U.S. papers and their Web sites.
The Associated Press ran at least one story out of Baghdad, but without the newspaper or reporter’s name, and it did not appear in any major newspapers Sunday or Monday. AP held off all further reports at the request of the Monitor, which did not release the information until this afternoon. Jay Jostyn, a Monitor spokesman, told E&P it acted now–sending an email to news organizations after 2:30 p.m. and with a story on its Web site at 3:00 P.M.–because the story had by now circulated via 40 to 50 outlets abroad.
The Monitor revealed that the reporter, Jill Carroll, is a stringer for the paper who has written many stories for the newspaper for about a year, the last four or five months reporting from Iraq.
“We have been advised that the less that is said, the better,” Jostyn told E&P this morning, before a Monitor story about the abduction was posted. “If she is not telling her captors she is a reporter and there is a story out there that she is, we need to be sensitive to that.”
Jostyn said the request for a news blackout was made in an effort to protect her safety. The Monitor’s own story about the abduction, and a related editor’s note, did not mention the news blackout. It mentioned that her family had urged her captors to release her. “We just felt it [the blackout] is not something we wanted to publicize,” he said.
Several editors at major news outlets earlier today said they were glad to oblige and hoped their efforts would help win Carroll’s release.
Well, isn’t that special.? When one person’s life is at stake every single MSM outlet will keep quiet.? When our Country’s security is at stake, screw it….let’s publish all the classified material we can get our hands on about LEGAL wiretaps.
Who knows how many American lives the disclosure of the wiretaps have put at stake but its a damn sight larger then ONE.
See author page
I agree with the Jawa report get her name out there as soon as possible.