How to cover a kidnapping: Moral questions, and journalistic ones
On Saturday, Jan. 7th, Christian Science Monitor writer Jill Carroll was abducted in Baghdad and her translator Allan Enwiyah was killed. The CSM requested a news blackout “pending further notice.” News had gone out already over the wire, but even so, the blackout was generally honored until the CSM lifted it Monday. Almost a week later Jack Shafer wonders about the ethics of a news blackout, especially when a journalist is involved:
Were journalists guilty of treating a fellow reporter differently than they would a kidnapped nonreporter? Were there precedents for such an indefinite blackout?… Should the blackout have been observed even though CNN had covered the killing and the foreign press had already published news about it?
He asks Washington Post Managing Editor Philip Bennett, Los Angeles Times Managing Editor Doug Frantz and the NYT‘s Bill Keller, who obviously had some experience directing coverage of close-to-home stories in recent months....
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