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It was hidden for seven months—almost unheard of in the news world.  A kidnapping by the Taliban of a reporter to the NY Times was hidden and covered up by both the print and online press.  The thing is, in this case, it was done for his safety.

David Rohde, along with his interpreter and their driver, was kidnapped in Afghanistan on November 10, 2008.  In response to the action, executives at the Times decided to keep it quiet, believing that publicity about the event would increase Mr. Rohde’s value to his captors, and in turn, lower his chances of survival. 

Usually, when a decision is made to keep something quiet, a call is simply placed editor to editor from one publication to another.  The trouble in this day in age in keeping news quiet is the obvious.  We have the Internet.  News travels at the click of a button whether someone wants it to or not.

And that is just what happened in this case.  Or, what kept trying to happen anyway.  Just days after Mr. Rohde was kidnapped, it began showing up on his Wikipedia entry.  Thus started the Wikipidia editing battle.

Since Wikipedia works under the premise that anyone can be writer and editor, and that information should be made public, those self-made writer/editors wanted to put the information of the kidnapping out there for public information, without being in on the fact that people related to the situation wanted desperately to keep it hidden for the life and death safety of Mr. Rohde.

And so, the information would pop on on Wikipedia, only to be taken down.  This removal was part of a joint effort by co-founder of Wikidpedia Jimmy Wales, along with Wikipedia administrators and people at the Times.  Although, in an interview, it was stated that Wikipedia’s cooperation was not a given, and that “We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,” he said. “I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.”

Further adjusting things on Wikipedia to help the situation was Michael Moss, an investigative reporter at the Times, as well as a friend of Mr. Rohde.  A couple of days after the kidnapping, knowing that the abductors would be researching their captive, he went onto Wikipedia and adjusted the page on Mr. Rohde to emphasize his work that might be seen as sympathetic to Muslims.  For example, his coverage of the Srebrenica massacre of the Bosnian Muslims, or reporting on Guantánamo. 

Mr. Moss, who has written extensively about the Taliban and Al Qaeda, hid his identity when making these changes to the page.  “I knew from my jihad reporting that the captors would be very quick to get online and assess who he was and what he’d done, what his value to them might be,” he said.  “I’d never edited a Wikipedia page before.”

The history on that page shows that the very next day, someone (without a username), edited the entry to include the kidnapping for the first time.  It was deleted by Mr. Moss.  The same unknown user quickly restored it, along with a note offering protest about the removal, and citing an Afghan news report.  In the first couple of days, a few blogs and at least two small news agencies did report the kidnapping, though for the most part it was contained.

About then, the chief spokeswoman for the New York Times Company, Catherine J. Mathis, called Mr. Wales and asked him for his help.  He agreed, and in turn, turned to one of the several admins who would eventually become key in both monitoring and controlling the page. 

On November 13, the kidnapping news was posted and removed four times in as many hours.  At this point, an admin blocked any changes for three days.  When those three days were up, it had to be blocked again, this time for two weeks. 

“We didn’t want it to look unusual in some fashion that would draw speculation, so we would protect it for three days, or up to a month, which is pretty normal,” Mr. Wales said.  He added, “Weeks would go by before there was a problem.”

Interest in posting news of the kidnapping didn’t fade after the new year.  On February 10th and 11th, two different users added information to the page regarding it, only to have it promptly deleted.  They began tacking on little notes to the updates.  “We can do this months,” one said.

Since it was so well hidden from the public for the most part, most of the attempts to edit the Wikipedia page came from only three similar IP addresses that all correspond to service provider in Florida.  Although Wikipedia administrators guess it was the same person, they do not know who that person is.  “We had no idea who it was,” said Mr. Wales, who said there was no indication the person had ill intent.  “There was no way to reach out quietly and say ‘Dude, stop and think about this.’ ”

The whole cat and mouse game came to an end Saturday, when Mr. Rohde and the translator escaped from a Taliban compound in Pakistan.  Ms. Mathis emailed Mr. Wales before she made an official announcement, and Mr. Wales then unfroze the page.

The announcement brought forth a big “I told you so” from the unknown user, who posted the information (yet again), along with a note to Wikipedia administrators saying “Is that enough proof for you [expletives]? I was right. You were WRONG.”

Whether or not Wikipedia agreeing to actually withhold news and information was a right or wrong decision in the eyes of some shall remain to be seen.  Is it okay to do it when lives are at stake?  Joseph M. Reagle, an adjunct professor of communications at New York University who studies Wikipedia says “Wikipedia has, over time, instituted gradually more control because of some embarrassing incidents, particularly involving potentially libelous material, and some people get histrionic about it, proclaiming the death of Wikipedia,” he said. “But the idea of a pure openness, a pure democracy, is a naïve one.”

Read: [NYTimes]