Washington, June 29: The New York Times managed to
keep news of the kidnapping of one of its reporters by Taliban
in Afghanistan for several months off Wikipedia, an online
user-edited encyclopedia, the newspaper reported today.
New York Times (NYT) reporter David Rohde, who was
kidnapped by the Taliban on November 10 last year, escaped
from his captors along with his interpreter Tahir Ludin on
June 19.
A number of news agencies and websites at the request of
the NYT agreed not to report the kidnapping for safety
reasons. NYT executives believed that publicity would raise
Rohde`s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce
his chance of survival, the newspaper said.
However, the paper said keeping the news off Wikipedia
was another matter.
"At least a dozen times, user-editors posted news of the
abduction on a Wikipedia page about 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 users," it said.
"The sanitizing was a team effort, led by Jimmy Wales,
co-founder of Wikipedia, along with Wikipedia administrators
and people at the Times," the newspaper said.
"We were really helped by the fact that it hadn`t
appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,"
Wales told the Times. "I would have had a really hard time
with it if it had."
Bureau Report
