Rohde: media face tough choices in kidnap cases
(Read article summary)Should the media have kept the capture of The New York Times journalist quiet during his seven months of captivity?
New York
Late Friday night, New York Times reporter David Rohde and his assistant Tahir Ludin slipped over the wall of the Taliban compound where they were being held in Pakistan’s North Waziristan and made their way to safety at America’s Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan after seven months in captivity.
Mr. Rohde, who won a Pulitzer prize in 1996 for uncovering the massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica while working for The Christian Science Monitor, and this year for his role in the New York Times’s coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, had been held since Nov. 10, 2008. He, Mr. Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal, were kidnapped outside Kabul. Mr. Mangal did not escape with his colleagues.
Rohde’s kidnapping had been kept largely quiet by the world’s media, following the lead of the Times and the urging of the family, both of which were concerned that coverage of the kidnapping would put the three men’s lives at greater risk.
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