Mellissa Fung and the Canadian media establishment's standards

Mellissa Fung, a CBC reporter kidnapped - apparently from her car - outside of Kabul on October 12th, has been released and is reportedly safe inside the Canadian embassy in the Afghan capital:

CBC journalist Mellissa Fung was released into the custody of Canadian officials in Kabul on Saturday, four weeks after she was abducted.

Fung was taken by armed men who approached her in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul on Oct. 12. The journalist, who was stationed at the NATO military base in Kandahar but was visiting the Kabul-area camp to report on a story, was then taken to the mountains west of the Afghan capital.

As news of her release broke on Saturday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that she was in good health and undergoing a medical examination.

You'll also note the next paragraph of the CBC story with interest:

News of the abduction was kept secret over concerns about her safety.

"In the interest of Mellissa's safety and that of other working journalists in the region, on the advice of security experts, we made the decision to ask media colleagues not to publish news of her abduction," CBC News publisher John Cruickshank said. "All of the efforts made by the security experts were focused on Mellissa’s safe and timely release." [Babbler's bold]

I'm extremely glad Ms. Fung has made it through this ordeal more or less unharmed - although I'm sure the experience will have unseen repercussions on her life going forward. I obviously wish her nothing but the best.

I'm also encouraged by the actions of the Canadian mainstream media on this issue: they placed the well-being of an individual human being over the public's supposed "right to know" every detail under the sun. They refused to allow their own mandate to report newsworthy events to potentially endanger a Canadian citizen in peril abroad.

And this wasn't just the CBC, either. I learned of the kidnapping on the 14th, and started asking around to see if anyone knew any more than I did. You may not know that the incident was reported by the Afghan media, in a number of stories at the time. Nobody in this country picked them up. I e-mailed my colleagues at The Torch - many of whom read various Afghan media sources - and asked them not to publish anything they stumbled across in their readings.

Anyhow, it seems most of the Canadian media was in on the story, and nobody - not one ambitious one of them - broke ranks and reported it against the wishes of the family, the Canadian government, and their own colleagues. Again, good on them.

Perhaps this represents an epiphany of sorts for our MSM. For once, they have acknowledged that they aren't simply dispassionate observers and conveyors of events, but that they can affect them by their reporting.

Gloria Galloway, take note. For those who aren't familiar with her all-too-pat response to such concerns - those that didn't involve a Canadian journalist - here's what she said:

Journalists live for details. They are our stock in trade. And, as long as we know them to be fact, we throw them into our work without giving a lot of thought about who might be reading on the other end – at least we try to. Sometimes we agonize about what the fallout will be. But we do our best to get over it.

The people who read our work deserve as fully formed a picture as our words can paint.

Which does, as on this occasion, cause pain to some of the people we write about.

The defence I have offered, and I am not sure that it has been entirely accepted, is that we report in this way because these stories are news.

Bob Fife, take note as well: some things should trump a scoop.

As I said, perhaps this moment marks a change of heart for Canadian journalists, as the consequences of what they do - the life and death consequences - hit home in a personal way for the first time.

But given the fact that someone at CBC News - the organization that has been agonizing over Fung's kidnapping for nearly a month - decided to publish a story five days ago describing the kidnapping of a French aid worker in Kabul, I remain doubtful those lessons have been completely internalized.

Perhaps the full consequences of a Canadian news organization's reporting still don't really matter unless those consequences are measured out upon one of their friends, colleagues or family.

I certainly hope that's not the case, but given the precedent, I'm not holding my breath.

Again, best wishes to Ms. Fung and her family. And a hearty BZ to all those nameless, stalwart hundreds around the world who were involved in securing her release - well done.