We live in the age of omnipresent reporting. From live-blogging to citizen journalism, it’s almost impossible for most events to slip through the cracks. The story of New York Times reporter David Rohde is one of the few examples of successfully keeping news from spreading and with good intentions.
Just over a week ago, David Rohde escaped from the Taliban after being their hostage for seven months. It came as a surprise to the public, but soon the amazing story of media cooperation surfaced. When Rohde was captured along with another local reporter and a driver, The New York Times feared public knowledge of the capture would inflate the value of their lives and create significant hurdles to their safe return.
To combat the keen eye of the news, the New York Times notified 35 major news organizations and asked them to keep quiet, which they did. The only leak was Wikipedia. An anonymous contributor from Florida repeatedly posted on the disappearance of Rohde and actually fought with edits from the New York Times and the Wikipedia Foundation. The user could not be contacted and even insulted the removal of their edits. Fortunately, Rohde escaped before the news spread and the difficult process of keeping the attention to a minimum was a success. The stubborn Wikipedia user never realized the gravity of the situation and raises the concerns of the unchecked flow of information. The New York Times reports,
When the news broke Saturday, the user from Florida re-posted the information, with a note to administrators [who froze the page] that said: “Is that enough proof for you [expletives]? I was right. You were WRONG.”
Joseph M. Reagle, an adjunct professor of communications at New York University who studies Wikipedia, said he was not sure whether its role in suppressing news about Mr. Rohde would prompt an outcry among longtime editors, because in the Rohde case, lives were at stake.
“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.”
[via TechCrunch]
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