It was seen as akin to not releasing certain details about a victim, to enable the police to conduct a more effective investigation of what potential suspects did or did not know.
However, it must be remembered that the primary interest of the newspaper is to tell the truth, not to further a particular social objective, as defined by a government agency, whatever the agency's goals. In the case of the hostage-taking, individual officer's lives were at stake. However, it would not be ethical to refuse to release information about the treatment of inmates at the prison that lead to the riots, even if this information was inflammatory. The benefits of exposing such abuses are so great, when weighted against the theoretical potential harms. The newspaper intends to publish such stories about the prison in the near future.
The primary policy objective that has emerged from this incident is that: "during time critical hostage situations, the Daily Drum will err on the caution in releasing information in 'real time.'" However, other than that specific caveat, the Drum's interest is always to serve the public, not government agencies, and to uphold its reputation for accuracy and fairness. The interests of state agencies and the public are not always synonymous.
Section 3: Editor's memo
This issue is primarily one of logistics and understaffing rather than ethics. While the newspaper would clearly like to allow commentary on all of its various news stories, it is not feasible given the severe cuts the paper has been forced to make merely to remain solvent. Monitoring the website for inappropriate, abusive, and threatening comments is essential to retain journalistic integrity and also to avoid lawsuits. If a commentator makes a threat, or if repeated factual inaccuracies are printed in the comments section and are not corrected, readers might assume the inflammatory words...
There is also the additional problem of spam comments, which, while not always an ethical concern, can be extremely annoying and detract from the perception of the article as accurate.
Allowing readers to comment on blogs by columnists that are monitored by the individual authors is a reasonable compromise and still online readers to engage in some personal interaction with the Drum's writers. The policy that the writers of the blogs do review the comments should be clearly posted, as well as a directive to keep all comments civil and pertinent. A similar directive is published on the comments section of most major news organizations, including the New York Times. The New York Times states, regarding its comments monitoring policy: "While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers and generally cannot alter a comment once it is posted."
Creating a comprehensive news source that exists in dialogue with its readers does not mean that a newspaper must publish everything -- it cannot publish every story advocated by every group of every political stripe, nor does allowing petty name-calling in the comments section promote dialogue.
Works Cited
"FAQ about comments." The New York Times. December 13, 2009.
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/faq/comments.html
"What do you think of The New York Times' decision to withhold information regarding reporter
David Rohde's kidnapping?" Women on the Web. June 28, 2009. December 13, 2009.
http://www.wowowow.com/politics/what-your-opinion-david-rohde-kidnapping-new-york-times-324349
