Why Wikipedia was right to stop the revelation of David Rohde's kidnapping

Wikipedia has grown up.

A story in the New York Times yesterday reveals that the newspaper colluded with the people running the online encyclopaedia to stop news of a reporter being kidnapped in Afghanistan from being released.

Some may see this as censorship - going against Wikipedia’s ethos to freely release all information. But speaking as a biased journalist, I think this is an example of Wikipedia showing responsibility and understanding its power and importance in the digital age.

The story is this: one of the Times’s reporters, David Rohde, was kidnapped by the Taliban several months ago - he recently escaped. The paper, fearing for Mr Rohde’s safety, wanted to keep the news secret. The paper thought that

publicity would raise Mr. Rohde’s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival

Keeping the news secret was easy when it came to dealing with the mainstream media. The executive editor, Bill Keller, simply called another editor and it was agreed not to report Mr Pohde’s disappearance.

But the process wasn’t so easy on Wikipedia. The NYT reports:

A dozen times, user-editors posted word of the kidnapping on Wikipedia’s page on Mr. Rohde, only to have it erased. Several times the page was frozen, preventing further editing — a convoluted game of cat-and-mouse that clearly angered the people who were trying to spread the information of the kidnapping

Stopping the release of this information was a joint effort between Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, the website’s administrators and people at the Times.

But Mr Wales admitted that co-operating with the paper wasn’t a given.

"We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,” he said. “I would have had a really hard time with it if it had"

It was entirely possible that the people trying to update Wikipedia on this news were not being malicious. They are anonymous, and could not be told about the high stakes this information had. But I for one, am glad that Wikipedia took this decision.

There are two competing values to balance here. The first is freedom to disseminate information. The second is the effect it has on individual concerned. Put another way: freedom of speech vs a right to privacy. 

The internet (and newspapers generally) are, to my mind, skewed correctly towards freedom of speech. But sometimes someone’s right to privacy is so important it overrides the rule. Trying to keep Mr Rohde alive is one such example. Wikipedia’s maturity should be applauded.

Comments

[DS]

"Some may see this as censorship"? It *is* censorship. You may approve of it, but then you're approving of censorship.

You may believe that suppression of information is OK under some circumstances, and that's certainly your right, but at least admit that you're sanctioning censorship.

It would of course be worse if the government were doing it -- making it a criminal act to report it -- but it's just a short step from one to the other. Slippery slope.

Your rationale here for censorship is purely speculative -- that it would make the kidnapping more likely to succeed if news of it were to get out to a wider public. You don't *know* that -- it's only an informed guess. That rationale could easily be extended many other situations. Be careful what you ask for.

[dp]

Sorry. Disagree. WikiFAIL.
You think Afghan tribesmen are constantly checking to see if the guy's been mentioned in Wikipedia?

Perhaps he can tell us now that he's free.

Elsewise, it's just another jurnlistic arrogance.

[stephen]

DP: "You think Afghan tribesmen are constantly checking to see if the guy's been mentioned in Wikipedia?"

Actually, the reporter who led the campaign to suppress the information knew from having researched similar kidnappings in the past that a trip to the Internet would have been the kidnappers' first stop, in order to find out the details and bargaining power of their catch. This is mentioned in the NYT article today. For a similar reason, information was added to his Wikipedia profile highlighting his sympathetic reportage toward Muslims, and all references to his having worked for the CHRISTIAN Science Monitor were removed.

Even Afghan "tribesmen" have access to the Internet. OF COURSE they would be researching how much he was worth and how much they hated him.

[John Doe]

Why should we believe the NYTimes when they say it was saving his life? Aren't they the ones enginering the coverup? Perhaps they had something to gain - an undisclosed legal liability?

Beyond that, how do I get my "no stories that may kill you get reported" pass. I'd send mine to George Tiller - oh wait, I guess late-term abortions are more in the public interests than the ongoing War in Afganistan.

PS: The news was reported in a reliable source - the Afganistani news wire picked it up.

[Paul Roberton]

Surely its more a case of a story embargoed than censorship? Stories are often embargoed for a variety of reasons all the time.The collective agreement of the British media to not report on Prince Harry's tour of duty in Afghanistan is a classic example.

[Sue Burnett]

I'm surprised Patrick Foster didn't announce news of the kidnapping 'in the public interest'.

[Pedro Custodio]

Next time, after a kidnap, all they need to do is check Wikipedia and if its *not* reported, then they know someone with power is omitting it from there.

And by the way, censure is always like that: to protect a grater good.