From: Jack Shafer
To: Ellen Knickmeyer
Jan 12, 2006

Can you think of a precedent for the Jill Carroll blackout? Has the Baghdad press agreed to black out the breaking news about a kidnapping of a journalist (or anybody else)?

I've read the emails the Baghdad press corps sent around following the kidnapping and it appears to me that you were central in the distribution of the CSM request and that you supported it. Is that right?

Do you think the press corps would have rallied to a similar blackout request made by, say, a contractor, whose employee had been kidnapped? The CSM request was until "further notice."

Did you agree to the blackout on your own authority, or did you wait for approval from your editors in Washington?

Did the Post Baghdad bureau wait until the CSM lifted its request before filing a story, or did it decide independently (or with Washington) that there were no operational reasons not to publish?

Are there other issues from my piece or that you've thought about that I should address in my piece?

Once again, thanks for cooperating. I hope I've not come off as a know-it-all in either my first piece or in asking these questions.

Regards,
Jack

From: Ellen Knickmeyer
To: Jack Shafer
Jan 12, 2006

The biggest misconception is the idea that this is unprecedented, or that it's a privilege journalists only grant fellow journalists. I don't know of any time when any ethical journalist _ which is to say, most of them _ has reported on something when a credible request is made not to and it is clear that doing so would endanger a life. That's the same whether the life is that of a government employee, a contractor, an aid worker, a U.N. worker, an Iraqi official, or a private Iraqi citizen. That's true for all conflict zones.

Otherwise, I'll go at the questions in narrative form, sted sequentially.

We were the first people who got the news of Alan's killing and Jill's kidnapping, and as a result we were the first people to call the embassy and get things started. There were lots of other people on scene and involved immediately after, in minutes, and the Christian Science Monitor was alerted and looked to for direction on every step within minutes.

(Coincidentally, we also were the bureau that drew the January liaison slot for kidnappings. Back when Rory Carroll of the Guardian got kidnapped here a few months ago, all of us who could assemble for a night meeting drew names so that each month there would always be someone charged with devoting themselves to being community liaison for kidnappings or other crises. That was motivated partly by a desire that even the one-person bureaus here or the free-lancers would have one person in Baghdad who would drop everything else and do nothing but work on behalf of the person in trouble.)

For the questions - It's a misconception that journalists were giving journalists a degree of concern for security that they wouldn't give others, or haven't, that it was unprecedented - anyone who thinks it was unprecedented can't have had much experience in conflict areas.

Kidnapped journalists in fact receive less consideration and without exception receive more early coverage than any other community, because the kidnapping of a journalist is known instantly to the journalist community.

For perspective, U.S. officials said last month there are about 15 Americans kidnapped and still missing in Baghdad.

As far as I know, we know and have reported about exactly two of them, before Jill: contractor Jeffrey Ake and the American member of the Christian Peacemaking teams.

The other 13 or so have received absolutely no coverage, whether that's for good or bad. They received complete anonymity.

On Jeffrey Ake's and the Christian Peacemaker's kidnapping, their identity and news of their kidnapping came out no sooner than three or four days later, when a video was released by their kidnappers. That's how every other kidnapping in Iraq has been reported _ no sooner than two or three or four days, with the video.

With Rory's kidnapping, by contrast, news of his kidnapping was out on the websites and the wires starting a half-hour after his kidnapping.

That was because journalists _ as any community does, whether journalists or contractors or aid workers _ instantly called each other to spread the word and warn each other.

Those first reports included mistaken reports that Rory was British. Rory has an Irish passport, but the kidnappers were looking for a British hostage to trade. In ways I can't go into, that early news killed the first efforts to find Rory.

More generally, it is standard operating procedure for every company I know about to not announce kidnappings, or limit what they say, or ask outright for privacy, out of concern for the kidnap victim's chances in the fluid early hours. Newspapers and news agencies do it; private contracting firms do it; aid groups do it; governments do it.

Like I said, I do not know of any reputable member of the media in any conflict zone or in any recent decade to turn down any such request when it's clear that disseminating that news would endanger the life of a person.

That's true here if the U.S. military says a rescue operation, for example, or other operation is ongoing, and that reporting on it at that moment would expose the people involved for targeting.

That's particularly true with Iraqis, the most exposed element of the wider community here. If it would render them vulnerable to targeting, we routinely do everything we can to avoid identifying Iraqis in a way that would help anyone pinpoint them.

You can ask the U.S. military, or contractors, or aid workers, or the U.N., or Iraqi or foreign businesses, or Iraqi government officials, about how they handle putting out news of operational security in general and kidnappings in particular. It's worth also asking them how responsive news agencies are to their requests.

Finally, I don't know of any news organization _ no, there were a couple of British papers, actually _ that kept up reporting when the CSM formally made its request from Boston. Nobody _ virtually nobody _ disregarded the wishes of Jill's employers and family when her life was clearly at stake.

And yeah, I do know of one organization that gave notice it intended to stop honoring the request for a blackout. The CSM lifted the blackout before that came into play, though.