A New York Times reporter falls into the hands of the Taliban and not a word appears in major news outlets until after his escape seven months later.

An American soldier in Afghanistan falls into the hands of the Taliban, and although the military seeks media restraint while it launches a search, his plight earns barely three days of silence.

A double standard?

Maybe yes, maybe no.

In the first case, numerous journalists, news organizations, blogs and even Wikipedia were aware of Times journalist David Rohde’s capture in November 2008. But nary a word was published or broadcast, and accounts that surfaced online were either ignored by major media or scrubbed until word emerged of his escape on June 19.

The reason, according to The Times and others, was that journalists who got wind of Rohde’s predicament responded to Executive Editor Bill Keller’s argument that publicity could threaten Rohde’s life.

In the missing-soldier case, a Stars and Stripes journalist in Afghanistan learned early on of the disappearance of Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl. Reporter Dianna Cahn was embedded with an American military unit on June 30 when word came down that operations were being shifted to search for a soldier discovered missing earlier that day.

Cahn began asking questions and got enough answers to glean the essentials of what had happened. But she was also told by military officials that premature publicity could jeopardize the soldier’s life and efforts to free him.

Cahn properly alerted her immediate supervisor about the disappearance and the military’s request to hold off reporting it.

The supervisor, Joe Giordono, a Stripes editor working in Germany, did not take issue with Cahn about the military’s request, which was made, after all, just 11 days after Rohde’s escape. Nor did he formally agree to it.

Rather, he said, he directed Cahn to continue her reporting to try to confirm and expand the elements of the story with senior military authorities. Only if that panned out would he pass the information – along with the request to delay publication – on to the paper’s top editors in Washington.

I understand Giordono’s caution in relaying sketchy information he thought needed further vetting, but in hindsight I think it would have been better to have given them a heads up sooner, especially since it involved a request to delay publication.

The editorial director of Stars and Stripes, Terry Leonard, told me that had he known of Cahn’s information, he would have almost certainly honored the military’s request for the sake of Pfc. Bergdahl’s safety. He also indicated that he would seek to clarify Stripes policy on notifying senior editors about such situations in the future. 

The reason this is all worthy of examination is Stars and Stripes’ unique relationship to the government, the Defense Department in particular. Stripes is published with a partial federal subsidy under Pentagon auspices, but the law and Pentagon directives prohibit anyone in government from trying to censor, suppress or otherwise corrupt its reporting.

When a senior Pentagon spokesman mentioned to journalists at other news organizations that Stars and Stripes had been first to learn of the Bergdahl situation but had withheld that news, colleagues passed that along to me with a hint of concern over Stripes’ editorial integrity and independence, which I am supposed to monitor.

But after interviewing the senior Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, and querying the paper’s top editors and its publisher, along with Giordono, Cahn and other Stripes journalists, I find no evidence that Cahn’s actions were unethical or guided by improper military conduct.

In fact, Cahn said, rather than having been subjected to any heavy-handed pressure, she had instead been offered an inducement by the military to delay going public: in exchange for her cooperation, she would get advance notice of when the news was about to be made public so she could be first to report it.

This sort of barter is not unknown in the trade. Unfortunately for Cahn, the military did not keep its word and publicly confirmed the soldier’s disappearance to another news outlet.

I endorse Cahn’s and Giordono’s tentative, temporary restraint. When life may hang in the balance, humanitarian concerns ought to weigh heavily in editorial decisions. There may be exceptions, for few things are absolute, but I would hope all journalists would deliberate on the consequences of their reporting situations like this, regardless of whether they involve fellow journalists or total strangers.

Cahn kept on gathering information during the media blackout, until it collapsed on July 2.

Interviews and research using the LexisNexis news database and other sources show that the BBC’s Worldwide Monitor picked up and relayed a report that day by a small news service, the Afghan Islamic Press, which said a Taliban commander had told it his forces had captured an American soldier and three Afghans.

The Afghan Islamic Press added that the U.S. military in Afghanistan had confirmed that one of its soldiers was missing.

This was the sort of report major media had ignored during Rohde’s captivity. But not this time.

Less than an hour after the time stamped on the BBC’s imprimatur of the Afghan report, Bergdahl’s plight was international news, quickly picked up and reported on by what would become numerous other news outlets, including Stars and Stripes, and even draw public notice from President Barack Obama himself.

Whitman said the military official who had provided the confirmation that opened the dam had mishandled it.

To her credit, Cahn was able to post on Stripes.com the most well-sourced same-day account that I have been able to find, in part because she had used the interlude to gather as much information as possible. She may not have been first to publish, but she was ahead of everyone else.

So, was a double standard at work? As far as Stripes is concerned, no. Everyone there handled a very difficult news situation professionally but also with sensitivity and responsibility, with one possible minor demerit for the tardy notification of senior editors.

Did Stripes’ brief silence compromise its integrity or independence? Again, no. It was strictly voluntary, based on humanitarian concern and within journalistic norms.

What about other media? The Washington Post reported that at least 40 news organizations (though not Stars and Stripes) knew about and sat on the Rohde story out of humanitarian concern. Why did Bergdahl not warrant the same restraint?

One argument might be that the two cases are dissimilar – thousands of troops and tons of military hardware were never mobilized to look for Rohde as they were for Bergdahl. Surely Bergdahl’s Taliban captors knew what was happening all around them.

And how long can reporters be expected to ignore massive diversions of forces and equipment and search missions happening right before their eyes?

Or it might have been that Rohde’s kidnappers demanded silence while Bergdahl’s captors courted publicity with their early boast to the Afghan Islamic Press and subsequent video of Bergdahl as a hostage.

Or it might have been that Rohde was viewed as a neutral party and Bergdahl not.

I really can’t say.  An inquiry I submitted to the BBC press office via its Web site on July 25 has thus far generated only an automated acknowledgement. By now, I must consider that a no comment.

But as far as Stars and Stripes is concerned, it did a commendable job.