Keeping News of Kidnapping Off Wikipedia

David Rohde of The New York Times in the Helmand region of Afghanistan in 2007. Tomas Munita for The New York Times

From The New York Times:

For seven months, The New York Times managed to keep out of the news the fact that one of its reporters, David Rohde, had been kidnapped by the Taliban.

But that was pretty straightforward compared with keeping it off Wikipedia.

Times executives believed that publicity would raise Mr. Rohde’s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival. Persuading another publication or a broadcaster not to report the kidnapping usually meant just a phone call from one editor to another, said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times.

But Wikipedia, which operates under the philosophy that anyone can be an editor, and that all information should be public, is a vastly different world.

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My Comment: I am glad that he escaped, but no one can argue that a double standard is being at play here.