Keeping News of David Rohde

NYTimes and Wikipedia save reporter’s life by NOT reporting on his capture
TechCrunch — ... 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 just a few hours ago, 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 ...

All the news that's fit to print (or edit)
Boing Boing Gadgets — ... The New York Times used its influence to kill a story: that one of its reporters was kidnapped and held for ransom. It gained the agreement of more than 35 other outlets to suppress the news. Wikipedia agreed to squelch attempts to break the story there, too. The rationale was that doing so would keep his ransom low and help ensure his safety. David Rohde ultimately escaped his Taliban captors. ...

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Silicon Alley Insider — GE opens a $100 million R&D center near Detroit, plans to hire 1,200 [WSJ] How companies deal with Twitter imposters [WSJ] Jimmy Wales kept news of a kidnapped NYT journo off Wikipedia [NYT] Google really wants you to believe its vulnerable to competition [NYT] Lunch with Warren Buffett costs $1.68 million on eBay [WSJ] Sony Ericsson is working on a PlayStation phone [VentureBeat] Apple kills useful public transit directions app [VentureBeat] MJ's death brought so many of the same queries to Google, Google thought it was dealing with a massive ...

Linkpost | 6.29.2009
TechBlog — ... June 29, 2009 Linkpost | 6.29.2009 • Keeping News of David Rohde's Kidnapping Off Wikipedia - News of the reporter's kidnapping by the Taliban made it onto Wikipedia four times, and was erased. • ...

Wikipedia held page hostage to protect captive NYT reporter
GMSV — In any debate on the importance of the free flow of accurate information, even in the face of resultant problems, you’d expect the New York Times and Wikipedia to line up on the same side, strongly pro flow. Now we have an idea of the circumstances required for them to make an exception . On Nov. 10, Times reporter David Rohde, his interpreter and his driver were taken captive by Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Times management, believing that publicity would only increase Rohde’s value to the kidnappers and hurt his chances for survival, contacted dozens of other news ...

Wikipedia and The New York Times Suppress Facts to Save Kidnapped Journo
Fast Company - Technology — ... have been caught manipulating entries). Wikipedia isn't a traditional media outlet, and therefore has no hard or soft journalistic moral code to abide by, which means it can be more flexible in its actions--and the fact a life was at stake here is a mitigating fact. But Wales' excuse still sounds particularly weak. As a result, the next questions about Wikipedia are: What other news pieces is it hiding? And will users trust in the site as a news source take a hit? [via The New York Times] Related: Chris Anderson Lifted Wikipedia Passages for ...

News Bits: Google Charms Regulators
Contentinople: — ... nearly a half a billion dollars from YouTube this year, though RampRate later said the loss would really be more like $174 million. Still, that's a lot of loss to be taking on more costs. When New York Times reporter David Rohde was kidnapped by the Taliban the paper managed to keep the story out of news -- even out of blogs like Gawker -- for seven months, fearing that publicity would up Rohde's value to his kidnappers and thereby reduce the chances that he would survive. But keeping the story out of Wikipedia took more than a call to an editor: According to NYT , ...

Wikipedia gets behind the NY Times to help hide story of kidnapping by Taliban
Gadgetell — ... Is it okay to do it when lives are at stake? Joseph M. Reagle, an adjunct professor of communications at New York University who studies Wikipedia says “Wikipedia has, over time, instituted gradually more control because of some embarrassing incidents, particularly involving potentially libelous material, and some people get histrionic about it, proclaiming the death of Wikipedia,” he said. “But the idea of a pure openness, a pure democracy, is a naïve one.” Read: [NYTimes] Full Story ...

NYT and Jimmy Wales worked together to keep kidnapping news off Wikipedia
Boing Boing — ... game of cat-and-mouse that clearly angered the people who were trying to spread the information of the kidnapping. Even so, details of his capture cropped up time and again, however briefly, showing how difficult it is to keep anything off the Internet -- even a sentence or two about a person who is not especially famous. The sanitizing was a team effort, led by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, along with Wikipedia administrators and people at The Times. Keeping News of Kidnapping Off Wikipedia (NYT)

The law vs. the right to know: Whose news is it anyway?
Betanews — ... The debate rages still about coordinated efforts by The New York Times and Wikipedia to embargo news of David Rohde's kidnapping from appearing in either information source. I have no ethical problem with the two organizations having done so, though I wish the practice was consistently extended to all situations in which publicity is one of the goals of the kidnapping itself. ( ...