media blackouts

A number of people have criticized the media for blacking out the name of kidnapped Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll for 48 hours in the hopes her release could be negotiated.

“You’ve got to ask yourself who else we would have singled out for this special treatment?” the president of Military Reporters and Editors, Sig Christenson, told E&P. “If this happened to anyone else, they would rush it out on the wires and they should. Do we really want to put reporters in a special class when we do a story? Is it ethical to do that and is it wise?”

Good questions. But the media agreeing to withhold information, for a limited time, when it comes to kidnappings is not exactly “almost unprecedented,” as Time alleges.

• In August 1993, the New York Post agreed to sit on the story of the kidnapping of business executive Harvey Weinstein. “It certainly would have been a Page One blockbuster, but we held it back, clearly in consideration of the family and the kidnap victim,” editor Ken Chandler told the AP in an Aug. 17, 1993 story. (NYT reporter David Kay Johnston alludes to this blackout in a letter on Romenesko today).
• At least 15 news organizations withheld agreed not to report the 1994 abduction of AP reporter Tina Susman in Somalia. “This is no different than what we do it if were a civilian, a non-journalist,” Louis Boccardi, president of the AP, told the Times at the time.
• News organizations briefly withheld information on the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst in 1974, Boccardi also told the Times.
• In El Salvador in 1985, local media blacked out news of the kidnapping of President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s daughter, Ines. (Is this reaching? It was El Salvador).

Other examples of the media withholding information — for a limited time — when doing so might save lives:

• Last October, WNBC-TV’s Jonathan Dienst held the story of a terrorist threat (later deemed unfounded) to NYC after public officials asked him to, citing security issues.
• Last year, the Times agreed to temporarily withhold details of how Ahmad Chalabi had compromised U.S. security. (He allegedly drunkenly told Iran’s Baghdad spy chief that the U.S. had broken their secret codes).
• Two weeks 9/11, Knight-Ridder held back a report that about “some small units of U.S. special operations forces had entered Afghanistan and were trying to locate bin Laden,” Washington Editor Clark Hoyt told the NYT for an Oct. 11, 2001 story. (USAToday only broke the story for U.S. readers after Pakistani newspapers had already reported it)

I’m sure any good editor or reporter feels uneasy about withholding information from readers. But temporary news blackouts are justified, IMHO, when lives or national security is at stake.