{"id":191216,"date":"2009-09-12T08:53:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-12T13:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/12\/time-for-a-blogger-ethics-panel-2\/"},"modified":"2009-09-12T08:53:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-12T13:53:00","slug":"time-for-a-blogger-ethics-panel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/12\/time-for-a-blogger-ethics-panel-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for a Blogger Ethics Panel"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are two questions raised by the kidnapping, and rescue of, New York Times<\/span> reporter Stephen Farrell in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

The first, and the one I don’t know enough about to come to a decision is whether it was worth the lives lost to rescue<\/a> him, particularly since it appears to have been a series of spectacularly<\/span> ill-advised decisions by Mr. Farrell precipitated this.<\/p>\n

However, I am disgusted at the people who say something to the effect of, “It’s the New York Times<\/span>, and they hurt the military, and so should be given no security consideration whatsoever.”<\/p>\n

Here’s a thing, if you sound like Ann Coulter, it means that you are an asshole.<\/p>\n

By the same token, if people routinely do amazingly stupid things, and expect to be rescued because<\/span> they work for the New York Times<\/span>, making it clear that neither the public purse, nor the blood of our military will be spent in such an endeavor makes sense.<\/p>\n

The second question, is one that I do feel qualified to discuss, is whether news of kidnappings of journalists should be suppressed.<\/p>\n

Bill Roggio reported the kidnapping<\/a> on the Threat Matrix<\/span> blog, and has been widely criticized by many in the media (here<\/a>, and a few of the comments<\/a> in response to his story) for reporting on this despite the request by the New York Times<\/span> that he sit on the story.<\/p>\n

I think that Mr. Roggio nailed the issue in a response in the comments on this post:<\/p>\n

I speak as someone who has reported from both Iraq and Afghanistan since 2005. To me, this is simple. Either a kidnapping is news, or it isn’t. When soldiers, contractors, etc. are kidnapped, it is news. When a reporter is kidnapped, it is also<\/span> news.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n

Bill Ardolino, also of Threat Matrix<\/span>, adds a useful data point<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A partial list of reports by the The New York Times<\/em> on kidnappings:<\/p>\n

November 15, 2002: NYT<\/em>: Red Cross workers kidnapped in Chechnya<\/a><\/p>\n

September 17, 2004, NYT<\/em>: Insurgents kidnap American and British civilians in Iraq<\/a><\/p>\n

January 18, 2005: NYT<\/em>: Catholic Archbishop of Mosul kidnapped in Iraq<\/a><\/p>\n

May 17, 2005: NYT<\/em>: CARE worker kidnapped in Kabul<\/a><\/p>\n

December 29, 2005: NYT<\/em>: German Family Kidnapped by Yemeni Tribe<\/a><\/p>\n

January 27, 2008: NYT<\/em>: NGO worker kidnapped in Afghanistan<\/a><\/p>\n

August 29, 2009, Reuters in the NYT<\/em>: Foreign Aid Workers kidnapped in Darfur<\/a><\/p>\n

20 hours ago: NYT<\/em>: Greek national kidnapped in Pakistan<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is clear that the demands for news suppression are self serving and dishonest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are two questions raised by the kidnapping, and rescue of, New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell in Afghanistan. The first, and the one I don’t know enough about to come to a decision is whether it was worth the lives lost to rescue him, particularly since it appears to have been a series of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1090,1051,1129,1006],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-hypocrisy","category-journalism","category-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}