Media Kept Quiet on Journalist's Kidnapping

David Rohde begins first-person account of capture, escape

(NEWSER) - New York Times reporter David Rohde begins a gripping first-person account of his 7 months as a Taliban prisoner in Afghanistan before he managed to escape. In the first of the five-part series, he writes of his capture ("I waited for the sound of gunfire. I knew I might die but remained strangely calm"), his pleas for release ("I wept, hoping it would created sympathy"), and his revelations about the Taliban ("I came to a simple realization: After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme" and ambitious the group had become). More»

(NEWSER) - A reporter for the New York Times held by the Taliban for 7 months in the tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan has escaped, the paper says. The Times kept David Rohde’s abduction secret out of concern for his safety and had been in sporadic contact with him and his captors. Last night, he and a local reporter climbed over the wall of the compound where they were held and were helped to safety by a Pakistani soldier. More»

It's more evidence of ties between government, Taliban

(NEWSER) - An investigative piece by the Nation about what happened in the aftermath of an American reporter's escape from his captors demonstrates yet again that Pakistan's secretive ISI agency maintains close ties with the Taliban. The case revolves around New York Times reporter David Rohde, who was kidnapped and held 7 months before his escape. After he got free, the two rival Taliban groups holding him suspected each other of letting him go as part of a deal to keep the ransom money. More»

Newspaper was prepared to pay $5M ransom to Taliban

(NEWSER) - David Rohde escaped from the Taliban only after weeks of planning, taking advantage of a length of rope to aid his descent down a 20-foot wall, the New York Times reports. The journalist and his Afghan colleague waited until a night when the city had electrical power, so the sound of their falls would be muffled by whirring air conditioners. More»

Huffington Post, AP, Philadelphia Inquirer , NYT all score prizes

(NEWSER) - The 2012 Pulitzer Prizes are out, and for the first time in 35 years a Pulitzer for fiction is not among them, reports the AP , which itself snagged an award for its series on NYPD spying. Without further ado, the list of winners:

• Public service: Philadelphia Inquirer
• Breaking news reporting: The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News staff
• Investigative reporting: Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley of the AP, and Michael J. Berens and Ken Armstrong of the Seattle Times
• Explanatory reporting: David Kocieniewski of the New York Times