Week in Review

Withholding a story

We often play host to visiting journalists from developing or newly democratic countries who ask how often, and under what circumstances, we hold back stories at the request of the government.

The answer is that we have done so only a few times in our history as a newspaper, and only then when authorities convinced us that publication would jeopardize the life of an intelligence agent or other person.

We applied a similar standard last week when we found out an American news photographer had been kidnapped in Iraq but his employers asked us to withhold details while they worked to get him released.

Freelance correspondent Paul Martin, who’s reported extensively for us from Baghdad and around the Mideast, learned of the kidnapping largely by accident while working on a separate story about British hostage Kenneth Bigley, who was beheaded by his kidnappers a little more than a week ago.

Mr. Martin had been told a week earlier by an Iraqi journalist with whom he works that Mr. Bigley was being held in the town of Latifiya, about 25 miles south of Baghdad. He had offered us the story — which was verified after Mr. Bigley’s death — but we had turned it down because we couldn’t confirm it through other sources.

While following up that story, Mr. Martin was told by the same Iraqi journalist last Sunday that kidnappers had seized another victim — photographer Paul Taggart of New York-based World Picture News — in Baghdad’s Shi’ite neighborhood of Sadr City.

Mr. Martin, based in London, quickly called the chief executive of World Picture News who confirmed the kidnapping but urged that we not publish the name of Mr. Taggart or his organization while efforts were being made to win his release.

We agreed to the request and included just two paragraphs about a kidnapped American journalist in Mr. Martin’s report on the Bigley murder in Monday’s newspaper.

A hostage freed

Mr. Martin called again Tuesday to say he had learned from his Iraqi contact — who’d been tasked by Mr. Martin with helping track down the hostage — that Mr. Taggart had been freed. The details were fascinating.

As Mr. Martin’s source told the story, Mr. Taggart had been seized by common criminals who hoped to sell him for profit to any extremist political group who would pay. With that in mind, they approached Baghdad’s Sunni Muslim Islamic Council, a group that opposes the American presence in Iraq but has not resorted to violence and terrorism.

The Islamic Council, Mr. Martin was told, had in turn contacted the Mahdi’s Army militia of militant Shi’ite cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr, who after two armed revolts against the Americans appears to be trying to convert his movement into a legitimate political party.

Mr. Martin’s source said the Shi’ite militiamen had set up a rendezvous with the kidnappers but, rather than paying for Mr. Taggart, had arrested the hostage-takers and turned the American photographer over to U.S. Marines.

This was a great story, showing unprecedented cooperation between formerly hostile Muslim groups. The only trouble was, when Mr. Martin called World Picture News in New York, he was told their employee still was not free.

That appeared to be the end of it, until about 6 p.m. that evening when a short item came across the Reuters news agency wire saying Mr. Taggart had been released and was on his way to the New York Times compound in Baghdad.

We called Mr. Martin who quickly confirmed the release with the New York Times bureau chief in Iraq. Other details checked out and we still had time to get the story on Wednesday’s front page.

• David W. Jones is the foreign editor of The Washington Times. His e-mail address is djones@washingtontimes.com.