[WikiEN-l] News agencies are not RSs

[stevertigo]

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