I'd just like to clarify one point. The NYT article does make it seem as if the entire reason that the actions were done were because Jimmy asked or requested it. This is not the case and I know this first-hand, of course being one of those administrators involved. I did what I did because I felt it was appropriate. I did not do it for any other reason. Of course I cannot speak for others but I would only assume that they have similar thoughts.
--- Rjd0060 rjd0060.wiki@gmail.com
Three more points:
1) Rohde's experience in reporting the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims by Serbian Christians may have drawn sympathy and support from Muslim officials, including perhaps some who may have sway with the kidnappers. Publishing details of his kidnapping in a Muslim country would have raised the issue of his work on behalf of human rights - of Muslims in particular - and gotten significant airplay in the Muslim context.
2) Not publishing the story and then creating an issue after the fact, makes such tactics unlikely to be successful in the future. Tactics have the problem of being exactly that - overt and discernible forms of movement that after study can be countered. That's again assuming that these tactics were substantially contributive to any success in this case.
3) Are the participating Western news orgs, just like the previous U.S. administration, now to consider Al Jazeera as hostile? Or perhaps as an organization that does not follow the same professional standards that Western news orgs claim to follow?
-Stevertigo
On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 9:07 PM, stevertigostvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Three more points:
- Rohde's experience in reporting the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims by
Serbian Christians may have drawn sympathy and support from Muslim officials, including perhaps some who may have sway with the kidnappers. Publishing details of his kidnapping in a Muslim country would have raised the issue of his work on behalf of human rights - of Muslims in particular - and gotten significant airplay in the Muslim context.
The NY Times presumably analyzed that, talked it over with security professionals in government and private employ, and decided against it. They have correspondents abroad in danger areas, and have had them kidnapped before.
I think they know better than Wikipedians - though I do not presume they know perfect.
- Not publishing the story and then creating an issue after the fact, makes
such tactics unlikely to be successful in the future. Tactics have the problem of being exactly that - overt and discernible forms of movement that after study can be countered. That's again assuming that these tactics were substantially contributive to any success in this case.
You're assuming that terrorists and professional kidnappers in the hinterland of Afghanistan have networks that include sophisticated Wikipedia and web history analysis experts. This is true for some organizations - but not many. The level of ignorance of advanced information sources is suprising even among groups that use some advanced high-tech tools such as websites and encrypted internet communications. Even on topics they were acutely interested in, Al Qaeda (who have doctors and engineers on staff) failed to gather useful information on modern chemical and biological and nuclear weapons. All the key info they're looking for is on the web and searchable - they didn't have much better than random stuff pulled from Google.
The pirates in Somalia have good communications - but poor intelligence other than regarding shipowners.
That this was done in one case does not mean it won't work again. Most intelligence gathering methods remain useful for quite a while after they're generally disclosed. Government intelligence agency and military targets harden rapidly, others tend to learn slowly.
- Are the participating Western news orgs, just like the previous U.S.
administration, now to consider Al Jazeera as hostile? Or perhaps as an organization that does not follow the same professional standards that Western news orgs claim to follow?
I don't know of anyone who feels Al Jazeera is hostile. They're trying to be an independent, honest, neutral actor in newsgathering in the Mideast, from a natively middle eastern perspective. They're smart, sophisticated, and pissing just about everyone off on all sides. Around here, that usually means they're both accurate, zealous, and impartial.
That does not always serve US short term interests. But then, from the US government's perspective, neither does the NY Times at times.
My hopefully enlightened perspective is that the rise of middle eastern based honest modern newsgathering will be a major part of the ultimate enlightened modernistic muslim refutation of the reactionary islamic terrorists. I think Al Jazeera's staff see themselves that way and I hope and think that they're right.
In reply to Wjhonson, here's an example of a captured reporter who subsequently had the chance to explain how careless coverage endangered his life.
In late 2001 Canadian journalist Ken Hechtman was in Afghanistan when the United States invaded, and was arrested as a suspected spy. Here's the situation he faced.
"Before the trial begins, the judge tells me to pick a name out of his hat. "What does he win?" I asked, indicating the big, black-turbaned Talib with the shit-eating grin. "He gets to shoot you, just as soon as we finish this formality of a trial. Okay, let's get started!" Ya gotta love these guys and their wacky black humour! Did I mention that my translator, a doctor from the Malaysian refugee camp where I'd started the day, was convinced I was guilty and never missed an opportunity to tell me or the judge so?"
Afterward they actually aimed a rifle at him and pulled the trigger, in an effort to get him to talk. They didn't tell him the clip was empty.
Just about at the point where he thought he was persuading the authorities that he really wasn't a spy, the news of his situation spread through the Canadian and international press. Journal de Montréal published a fact that put his life right back in danger: he was Jewish. The Taliban had Internet connections; they picked up on that.
It wasn't possible for him to publish those circumstances in a reliable source until after his release.
http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2001/120601/news8.html
-Lise
On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 9:51 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.comwrote:
On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 9:07 PM, stevertigostvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
Three more points:
- Rohde's experience in reporting the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims by
Serbian Christians may have drawn sympathy and support from Muslim officials, including perhaps some who may have sway with the kidnappers. Publishing details of his kidnapping in a Muslim country would have
raised
the issue of his work on behalf of human rights - of Muslims in
particular -
and gotten significant airplay in the Muslim context.
The NY Times presumably analyzed that, talked it over with security professionals in government and private employ, and decided against it. They have correspondents abroad in danger areas, and have had them kidnapped before.
I think they know better than Wikipedians - though I do not presume they know perfect.
- Not publishing the story and then creating an issue after the fact,
makes
such tactics unlikely to be successful in the future. Tactics have the problem of being exactly that - overt and discernible forms of movement
that
after study can be countered. That's again assuming that these tactics
were
substantially contributive to any success in this case.
You're assuming that terrorists and professional kidnappers in the hinterland of Afghanistan have networks that include sophisticated Wikipedia and web history analysis experts. This is true for some organizations - but not many. The level of ignorance of advanced information sources is suprising even among groups that use some advanced high-tech tools such as websites and encrypted internet communications. Even on topics they were acutely interested in, Al Qaeda (who have doctors and engineers on staff) failed to gather useful information on modern chemical and biological and nuclear weapons. All the key info they're looking for is on the web and searchable - they didn't have much better than random stuff pulled from Google.
The pirates in Somalia have good communications - but poor intelligence other than regarding shipowners.
That this was done in one case does not mean it won't work again. Most intelligence gathering methods remain useful for quite a while after they're generally disclosed. Government intelligence agency and military targets harden rapidly, others tend to learn slowly.
- Are the participating Western news orgs, just like the previous U.S.
administration, now to consider Al Jazeera as hostile? Or perhaps as an organization that does not follow the same professional standards that Western news orgs claim to follow?
I don't know of anyone who feels Al Jazeera is hostile. They're trying to be an independent, honest, neutral actor in newsgathering in the Mideast, from a natively middle eastern perspective. They're smart, sophisticated, and pissing just about everyone off on all sides. Around here, that usually means they're both accurate, zealous, and impartial.
That does not always serve US short term interests. But then, from the US government's perspective, neither does the NY Times at times.
My hopefully enlightened perspective is that the rise of middle eastern based honest modern newsgathering will be a major part of the ultimate enlightened modernistic muslim refutation of the reactionary islamic terrorists. I think Al Jazeera's staff see themselves that way and I hope and think that they're right.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
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On Mon, 29 Jun 2009, George Herbert wrote:
- Not publishing the story and then creating an issue after the fact, makes
such tactics unlikely to be successful in the future. Tactics have the problem of being exactly that - overt and discernible forms of movement that after study can be countered. That's again assuming that these tactics were substantially contributive to any success in this case.
You're assuming that terrorists and professional kidnappers in the hinterland of Afghanistan have networks that include sophisticated Wikipedia and web history analysis experts. This is true for some organizations - but not many. The level of ignorance of advanced information sources is suprising even among groups that use some advanced high-tech tools such as websites and encrypted internet communications.
This reasoning sounds good, but is not consistent with what we hear whenever we want to remove information from Wikipedia to help protect a person, but the person isn't as well connected to the media as a newspaper reporter. When we want to protect a non-reporter, we are told that since Wikipedia is just republishing information that is already out there and causing damage anyway, the person will probably have been hurt just as much without the Wikipedia article. And of course, Wikipedia is not censored, and that the five pillars of Wikipedia require the free flow of information and can never be compromised.
Certainly, someone who tried to suppress information in the same way, but was not Jimmy Wales or otherwise important on Wikipedia, even if they did it to save a life, would be accused of edit warring, told that they are abusing the rules, and taken to Arbcom and banned. Of course, in the process they would be told that their idea that they are saving a life is speculative and can't be proven. If one such person were to justify their actions by claiming that terrorists can't use the Internet well, we would reply "nice idea, but you really have no proof for that. You're just speculating. You don't know that that's true. Now stop the edit warring and the rules abuse-- we can certainly prove *that*."
You're making a good case that publishing information can harm someone. But this same good case has been made countless other times and it's never been accepted, saving a life or not.
stevertigostvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
- Rohde's experience in reporting the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims by
Serbian Christians may have drawn sympathy and support from Muslim officials
George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 9:51 PM, wrote:
The NY Times presumably analyzed that, talked it over with security professionals in government and private employ, and decided against it. They have correspondents abroad in danger areas, and have had them kidnapped before.
I think they know better than Wikipedians - though I do not presume they know perfect.
What's would make us "presume" that they know better? In fact your'e comparing the management of a small newspaper to the staff of a very large encyclopedia. It appears that you give great credit to management.
- Not publishing the story and then creating an issue after the fact,
makes
such tactics unlikely to be successful in the future.
You're assuming that terrorists and professional kidnappers in the hinterland of Afghanistan have networks that include sophisticated Wikipedia and web history analysis experts. This is true for some organizations - but not many. The level of ignorance of advanced information sources is suprising even among groups that use some advanced high-tech tools such as websites and encrypted internet communications.
And thus, if they have not the Google, nor the Wikipedia, why then black them out?
That this was done in one case does not mean it won't work again.
Most intelligence gathering methods remain useful for quite a while after they're generally disclosed.
[Citation needed]
Government intelligence agency and military targets harden rapidly, others tend to learn slowly.
Seems this can be abstracted a bit to general social cognition concepts and might remain true. But abstraction will probably reveal different dimensions to the concept that you have perhaps "hardened" into a idea about government intelligence.
A near-contradiction of terms, by the way.
- Are the participating Western news orgs, just like the previous U.S.
administration, now to consider Al Jazeera as hostile? Or perhaps as an organization that does not follow the same professional standards that Western news orgs claim to follow?
I don't know of anyone who feels Al Jazeera is hostile.
The point being that it draws a seriously subjective distinction between certain news orgs and others, in as far as how they deal with extra-journalistic modes of operation that overlap or circumuvent journalism itself.
Ostensibly, blacking out reportage of war crimes also "saves lives" too -- not the lives of the people in the conflict, but the lives of the soldiers who happen to be associated with the hellbound jerks who committed the crimes. The continued blackout of Iraq abuse photos qualifies. In reality its a bit subjective. Not that anyone wants to actually see the photos -- its just that censorship of evidence of factual events deviates from our understanding of human history.
Just to correct Mark (?) Al Jazeera at first did report it, but then joined the blackout after being contacted by NYT. An archived version of Al Jazeera's story would have sufficed as a source, and bypassed their blackout. This is all trying to deal a bit with Wales' point that if a less illegitimate news source reported it, keeping it under wraps would have been difficult. The real criticism here is not that they made the wrong call, but that they appear to be attributing to their own cunning and skill what better may be attributable to plain good-old good luck.
-Stevertigo
George wrote:
My hopefully enlightened perspective is that the rise of middle eastern based honest modern newsgathering will be a major part of the ultimate enlightened modernistic muslim refutation of the reactionary islamic terrorists. I think Al Jazeera's staff see themselves that way and I hope and think that they're right.
The first thing that Muslim world news orgs would have to do in that regard is to stop calling terrorists "jihadis" or "jihadist organizations." Both Muslim and Western world sources use "jihad" incorrectly in reference to Islamic terrorism:
1) In Muslim context, the word "jihad" has positive meaning.The word "muharib" or "hirabis" on the other hand connote barbarianism, piracy, vandalism, and uncleanliness (spiritual) etc. (AIUI).
2) The West in fact uses "jihad" in an ironic way -- to highlight Muslim-world conventional usage of the term as being supportive and even praising of murder.
Hence there is a sort of a dualistic game going on wherein both sides are abusive of the terminology.
-Stevertigo
On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 2:07 PM, stevertigostvrtg@gmail.com wrote:
- Are the participating Western news orgs, just like the previous U.S.
administration, now to consider Al Jazeera as hostile? Or perhaps as an organization that does not follow the same professional standards that Western news orgs claim to follow?
Al-Jazeera participated in the blackout:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25673247-2703,00.html