This past month almost at the same moment the media stared with awe at the capacity of twitter to cover the Iranian election protests and broadcast their cause worldwide against the wishes of the hard-line government, another story has played out nearby and to a large degree behind the scenes. In the middle of June after seven months of captivity New York Times reporter David Rohde and an a translator Tahir Ludin escaped from their Afghan Taliban kidnappers by scaling down wall and miraculously walking to safety at a checkpoint .The fact that they were kidnapped and held was kept under near total news blackout with the cooperation of most of the media as we know it. With one of their collogues life was at stake a black-out on news regarding the event was seen as a way to keep the situation from escalating and further endangering the reporter and his translator. “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.
It is amazing yet not unexpected what the New York Times in a life or death situation can accomplish with a phone call. However the next step getting the blackout to extend to Wikipedia has set an interesting precedent in its own way. Think about the fact that with all the Google ,the inner tubes, wiki’s and the tweeters a major news story was still successfully blacked out for over half a year .Separate out the purity of motive for a minute and consider the ability that a small group of people can have over information distribution in the world, even today with the media fractured in thousands of little pieces. .
To a degree this brings down to Earth some of the rhetoric about the power the internet gives to the huddled masses. Google at will can still clamp down information in China and with a call from Bill Keller the New York Times can, in a pinch easily stop and alter Wikipedia entries as it needs. Just as in Iran the U.S. State Dept requested multiple social networking and communication services to keep information flowing, it might have in another situation worked to shut them down.
The sanitizing was a team effort, led by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, along with Wikipedia administrators and people at The Times. In an interview, Mr. Wales said that Wikipedia’s cooperation was not a given.
On Nov. 13, news of the kidnapping was posted and deleted four times within four hours, before an administrator blocked any more changes for three days. On Nov. 16, it was blocked again, for two weeks.
“We didn’t want it to look unusual in some fashion that would draw speculation, so we would protect it for three days, or up to a month, which is pretty normal,” Mr. Wales said. He added, “Weeks would go by before there was a problem.”
On Feb. 10 and 11, two users added the kidnapping information several times to Mr. Rohde’s page, only to see it removed each time, and they attached some heated notes to their additions. “We can do this months,” one said.
When the news broke Saturday, the user from Florida reposted the information, with a note to administrators that said: “Is that enough proof for you [expletives]? I was right. You were WRONG.”
Clark Hoyt of The New York Times said most of the reader feedback he has received on the Times’ (and other media outlets) suppression of reporter David Rohde’s kidnapping has been critical. …….according to E&P online