New York Times Kept News Of Captured Reporter A Secret

Recently it’s become public knowledge that New York Times reporter David Rohde was captured and held hostage in Afghanistan, and that the Times not only didn’t report the story themselves but also asked other media outlets to refrain from publishing information.
I actually think that was a good decision. It was something I actually suggested be done with all hostages taken by terrorists way back in 2005. At the time I was reacting to an article written by photographer Paul Taggart, who had been held hostage in Iraq in 2004:

Right now ransoms paid by various companies and/or governments for hostages is a major source of funding for the extremists. As Mr. Taggart explained in his article, kidnapping has become something of a cottage industry in Iraq with even non-political criminal gangs getting into it for profit, which they acquire by selling their captives to the terror groups. But clearly and integral part of this process is media exposure. Media coverage of crying and suffering hostages puts pressure on governments to act. A lot of governments cave in and pay ransoms to the terrorists despite the fact that doing so only encourages more kidnappings.
So I wonder, if the media were to black out coverage of hostages taken by terrorists would this scheme be nearly as effective? Clearly the family and friends of those taken hostage should be kept informed as much as possible, but would it be so hard to limit reporting of these situations beyond that?
I’m not so sure we wouldn’t see a dramatic decline in the number of hostages taken were we to do just that.

Clearly, the New York Times agrees. When terrorists take hostages what they’re looking for is a) money and b) media exposure.
If we give them neither, perhaps we’ll see fewer hostages.
On a related note, it’s interesting that the Times doesn’t mind keeping things a secret when it’s the life of one of their reporters on the line. But expecting them to keep national security details a secret? Details that, once made public, could put our intelligence agents and/or soldiers at risk all over the globe? They can’t possibly do that.
Though I expect that the Times will be somewhat less dedicated in that regard now that Obama’s President. Because most of the disclosures made by the Times were less about informing the public and more about embarrassing (often due to the cherry-picked nature of the data being revealed) the leaders to whom the Times reporters are idealogically opposed.