So the double standard of the keeping the month old news of CBC reporter Mellissa Fung’s Kabul kidnapping hush hush is obvious.

Though news organizations would want us to think differently, it is because of the power her employer that her captivity was unreported for so long.

The public editor at the Toronto Star describes the situation and tries to give a comparable example where the Star acted differently.

When a CBC reporter was kidnapped in Afghanistan last month and other Canadian news organizations agreed to the national broadcaster’s request to suppress that news to better ensure the reporter’s safety, was that a double standard? Would a Canadian victim who was not a journalist get the same consideration?
[...]
On Jan. 23, the Star’s Asia bureau chief, Bill Schiller, reported on the plight of Je Yell Kim, a dental technician in his 50s who was held in Communist North Korea on vague charges relating to “national security.” His family had kept his arrest secret for more than two months in hopes that quiet diplomacy might secure his release.
[...]
There are significant differences between Fung’s kidnapping by bandits and the jailing of a Canadian by a sovereign state. Still, I’ve been troubled by the reality that the Star disregarded this family’s request to suppress that news, yet agreed to the CBC’s request to a news blackout about Fung. In both instances, a strong case was made that reporting could endanger a life. Is that a double standard? How will we handle such requests in the future?
– Ethical issues in kidnapping cases Toronto Star 15 Nov 2008

The column closes by saying that The Canadian Press’s kidnapping and terrorism policy of “No news story is worth someone’s life.” is “a value all thinking journalists can subscribe to.”

The Star column is a reasonable take on the issue and shows the value of a public editor or ombudsman at news organizations.

The Globe and Mail makes some weak attempts to justify its hypocrisy.

When CBC-TV reporter Mellissa Fung was kidnapped in Afghanistan, the news media’s decision to censor themselves was sensible, humane and necessary. Silence during the 28 days of her captivity served the public interest, which must surely be founded on a respect for life’s sanctity and dignity.
[...]
Some may accuse The Globe and Mail, the CBC and other Western news media of a double standard. U.S. President George W. Bush once told the New York Times it would have blood on its hands if it revealed that the government was using widespread wiretaps to track possible terrorist transactions, without obtaining judicial permission first, and terrorists subsequently attacked. The Times went ahead anyway.

But there are two salient differences between the electronic eavesdropping story and the Fung kidnapping. The first is that the state has a monopoly on force and detention, and the media act as watchdog. There was no act of state directly involved in the Fung kidnapping, apart from the Canadian government’s part in trying to obtain her release
– Self-censorship to save a life 11 Nov 2008

So, in this article they say that in a different situation they acted differently. That is irrelevant. What they need to produce is a situation where someone is kidnapped who is not a reporter or does not have power and influence and it did not get reported.

The previous day they had a different article with more examples.

Ms. Fung’s kidnapping two days before the federal election triggered hand-wringing on an international scale as Ms. Fung’s employer, the CBC, pleaded for discretion from rival news organizations.

Fragile negotiations for her release could be instantly derailed by any publicity, the public broadcaster, the military and the Prime Minister’s Office argued. Headlines might doom Ms. Fung to extra months of captivity, if not worse.
[...]
Michèle Ouimet, a columnist with Montreal’s La Presse, questioned the wisdom of engaging in negotiations with the enemy and the ethics behind the information freeze.

“Journalists are the first to invoke the public’s right to information, but they become awfully sensitive when it comes to one of their own,” Ms. Ouimet wrote.

Like Ms. Ouimet, one senior southwestern Asia correspondent wondered whether a person who was not connected to a powerful Canadian broadcaster would receive the same treatment.

“If we get into this argument, then every story we write has to be looked at with this in mind,” said the reporter, who isn’t authorized to give interviews by her employer.
[...]
Scott White, editor-in-chief of The Canadian Press, said CBC moved quickly to ask the wire services to wait.
[...]
In the case of a French aid worker, the news spread quickly, partly because a bystander trying to intervene was killed when she was taken on a busy Kabul street. The woman is still missing. The Globe received no request to withhold the news in the aid worker’s case.

Mr. White of The Canadian Press said “every respectable news organization would hold off” if a trusted source warned that a story could endanger a person’s life.
– A question of whether no news is good news 10 Nov 2008

So the examples they give in this story were:

• They didn’t report that Christian aid worker James Loney, who was kidnapped in Iraq, is gay (not relevant information anyway).
• At the request of the Federal government they did not report the Loney kidnapping for 24 hours.
• At the request of the reporter who wrote the story, La Presse held off on running a story when in 1980 a Canadian diplomat Ken Taylor helped six American hostages escape from Iran.
• They didn’t report on the kidnapping of a Dutch journalist.
• A French aid worker’s kidnapping was reported after someone was killed during the abduction. The story says, “The Globe received no request to withhold the news in the aid worker’s case.”

So, it seems like a hefty list of examples. In the cases of the aid workers both stories were reported, but — oh so honourably — they didn’t report an irrelevant, gay detail.

All other cases given involved diplomats and reporters.

And they justify in the French woman’s case that no one asked them, as though they can’t make value decisions on their own.

Part of the challenge with deciding whether to report something is that it can’t be undone. The bell cannot be unrung. This is part of the explanation in the Star’s counterexample of the detainee in North Korea is that it was already on “the Internet.” Once one person puts it out there it becomes known to the public and other sources releasing the story merely determine how widely it spread not whether it is public.

This fact shows how extraordinary it is that anyone can keep news like that known by new orgs, but unreported. In part it is just the ability contact. It’s no surprise that CBC can quickly contact CP or the Globe and get their request to be considered. Strangely the French aid organization could not call up the Globe editor as easily, if it happened to want to.

The other is influence. Being able to convince them into complying. You can see how the government could make a convincing appeal. Then colleagues in the news media can make a stong appeal to because they are colleagues and may even be friends. If there is to be a bias, and I think there is, it would more likely be in favour of like people.

So the Globe has not made a convincing case that it is not biased, nor that it escaped exercising a double standard. It could have provided a past example, if there were one. Of course a current example might still be ongoing.

There could be an uninfluential person from a small organization being held against his or her will overseas whose life is in danger and the new media organizations could be keeping it double super secret or they could be hypocrites.