The Poynter Institute's Romenesko Posts Keller's Memo on David Rohde

News broke this morning that New York Times Pakistan correspondent David Rohde and his Pakistani colleague Tahir Ludin escaped after being held by the Taliban for the past seven months -- and family members credited the NYT and other major media's agreement to completely black out any coverage of the kidnapping, which they say reduced Rodhe's value as a bargaining chip and bought time for the two journalists' escape. Wild!! And welcome home, David and Tahir!
Above is a link to The Poynter's coverage.


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Topic: Memos Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 6/20/2009 12:31:12 PM
Title: NYT editor's "joyous news"
Posted By: Jim Romenesko

From: Bill Keller/NYT/NYTIMES
Sent: 06/20/2009 12:16 PM AST
Subject: [NYT Newsroom] To the Staff: David Rohde

Colleagues:

Joyous news.

Last night we got word that David Rohde had escaped from the Taliban kidnappers who have been holding him for more than 7 months. He told his wife, Kristen, that he and his translator climbed over the wall of the compound where they were being held in Pakistan, and made their way to a Pakistani military unit. They were airlifted out by the U.S. military, and after a sleep and a physical at Bagram Air Base David will be reunited with his family.

There will be many people to thank -- the family members who stayed strong throughout David's ordeal, the many people at The Times who worked for his release, officials of several governments who offered information, advice and support, and many other news organizations that agreed to keep David's case quiet until it was resolved. As journalists, we all cringe at the idea of sitting on a story, but the consensus of experts we consulted -- and the judgment of the family -- was that a storm of publicity would at best prolong David's captivity by increasing his apparent value, and could well put him in imminent danger. We have withheld information in similar cases at the request of other organizations with employees at risk.

I expect we will be besieged by understandable questions about who did what to make this happen. I hope that if any of you are probed on the subject you'll keep in mind that anything we say about our efforts to get David out -- whether authoritative or speculative -- risks becoming part of the playbook for future kidnappers.

For now, the main thing is to get David to a place where he can spend time with his family, rest and recover. When the time comes, I expect he'll have a story to tell.

Best,
Bill

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