Secrets Worth Keeping
Will our Antique Media learn from this?
NEW YORK, June 20 — A New York Times reporter who was kidnapped by the Taliban and held for the past seven months in the mountainous region near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border escaped, along with a Afghan reporter, by climbing over a wall and finding a nearby Pakistani army base, the newspaper said in a report posted on its Web site. The reporter, David Rohde, 41, was taken captive Nov. 10 with local reporter Tahir Ludin and their driver, while he was in the early stages of researching a book on Afghanistan. News organizations, including The Washington Post, did not report on the abduction at the request of the Times, which feared that publication of the news could endanger the lives of the men.That last sentence is pretty interesting, isn't it? The New York Times, after all, is the newspaper that published this story on efforts to eavesdrop on terrorists—despite strong and well-reasoned objections about how the disclosure would imperil national-security efforts. The Times was probably sensible to make the request for media silence, and the Post and other papers were wise to heed it. Let's hope the MSM has learned that sometimes secrets are worth keeping.