Journalists and Soldiers

New York Times journalist Stephen Farrell and his Afghan translator Sultan Munadi were recently kidnapped by the Taleban in the Kunduz province of Afghanistan. In a subsequent rescue bid by the British Army, Sultan Munadi, two Afghan civilians and a British soldier were killed, Stephen Farrell was rescued unharmed.

Stephen Farrell and his colleague had gone to the area to investigate about an earlier US airstrike on two hijacked fuel tankers, which resulted in a number of civilian casualties. 

Following the event, blogs and news media were full of comments for and against soldiers risking their lives to save journalists seeking stories in conflict zones. Reading about the event and the comments that followed a few questions come to mind:

News about the airstrike and its civilian casualties had already been covered by  media outlets and people were already aware about it. So, whatever it was that Stephen Farrell hoped to achieve by digging around the scene, was it worth risking the lives of others?

The New York Times (NYT) and other allied news media, which always touts the mantra " ... the people have a right to know", maintained a news blackout on the kidnapping. The news media said the blackout was intended to protect the lives of the kidnapped victims and to facilitate the rescue process.

So, why did NYT and others not show such consideration when an American marine was kidnapped by the Taleban, a few months earlier? They splashed every little detail of the marine across their papers. Also, when Associated Press published the picture of a badly maimed marine in Iraq (who later succumbed to his injuries), against the express requests of the soldiers' father, they cited "... the public have a right to know" as the reason for their action.

Did the public have no right to know of Stephen Farrell's kidnapping? Or are there double standards — one for journalists and the other for the rest of us?

Knowing fully well that the Afghan army was not capable of mounting any rescue bid on its own, would NATO or the US army risk their soldiers if the kidnapped were Afghan or other third-world journalists?

And finally, a question to all of us 'the public', what exactly have we done with all the information that we gleamed through " ... our right to know"? The Afghan conflict has now been going on for over 8 years.