Toronto Star public editor Kathy English compared the handling of CBC journalist Mellissa Fung, taken captive in Afghanistan by bandits, with that of a Canadian man arrested in North Korea.
There was a media blackout on Fung, but not on Je Yell Kim's case.
I can easily justify Star editor-in-chief Fred Kuntz's decision to agree to the news blackout about Fung: It was a matter of putting human values ahead of journalistic values. Fung's safety, and possibly even her life, took precedence over transparency and the public's right to know. This was the clear ethical choice here. But, I don't have such clear answers about the Star's consistency in such matters.
Earlier this year, I was faced with the uneasy task of explaining to the family of an Edmonton man who had been taken into custody by North Korean authorities why the Star reported on his jailing despite their pleas that doing so could jeopardize negotiations to free him.
On Jan. 23, the Star's Asia bureau chief, Bill Schiller, reported on the plight of Je Yell Kim, a dental technician in his 50s who was held in Communist North Korea on vague charges relating to "national security." His family had kept his arrest secret for more than two months in hopes that quiet diplomacy might secure his release.
Following publication, Kim's daughter, Su Jin Kim, called my office crying inconsolably and asking why the Star disregarded her pleas not to publish when she explicitly stated her fear for her father's life.
I explained what Schiller had already told her: that the incarceration of a Canadian by a foreign government was an issue of important public interest in Canada. So, too, was the question of what Canadian authorities were doing to secure his release. I added that as information about her father's plight had already been posted on the Internet, it was likely that other journalists would report it, perhaps with less sensitivity than Schiller, who conveyed the family's concerns about publicity.
This conversation didn't sit easily with me and I questioned whether we had been fair in putting the news value before this man's possible safety. The good news is that Kim was released several days later, and possibly, the Star's reporting hastened his release by bringing his plight to public attention.
There are significant differences between Fung's kidnapping by bandits and the jailing of a Canadian by a sovereign state. Still, I've been troubled by the reality that the Star disregarded this family's request to suppress that news, yet agreed to the CBC's request to a news blackout about Fung. In both instances, a strong case was made that reporting could endanger a life. Is that a double standard? How will we handle such requests in the future?
In fact, the Star has no clear policy to guide reporters and editors here. With Canada now at war in Afghanistan, and kidnappings on the rise there and in other global terror zones, Kuntz, who was not consulted about the Kim case, agrees we do need an immediate policy. And while no policy can cover the many factors to be weighed in judging whether to publish or suppress a news story, at the very least, when someone's life is at stake, the editor-in-chief should be consulted.
The Canadian Press has a policy on kidnapping and terrorism that clearly places human values first: "No news story is worth someone's life," it states.
For me, that's a value all thinking journalists can subscribe to.