absent; for example, no satellite trucks were camped out on their lawn. The distinction in the way they were treated, compared to the way the families of random kidnap victims (be they truck drivers, soldiers, or civilian contractors) were treated, was so stark as to be unavoidable.
160. When Carroll was kidnapped, her identity was effectively "embargoed," kept out of press reports, for 48 hours, at the request of the Monitor. This seems entirely reasonable. (By the same token, when two Fox News personnel were kidnapped in Gaza, the story was downplayed at the request of Fox News, on the theory—apparently correct—that if less was made of the story, the kidnappers would conclude they had taken men of little value and eventually release them.) The question is how prepared the press is to participate in such embargoes when the victims are not reporters. See Jack Shafer, "The Carroll Kidnapping: What Information Should Reporters Suppress?" Slate.com, January 10, 2006, available from www.slate.com/id/2134093/.
161. John Dillin, "NBC News President Defends, But Revises, Terrorism Coverage, Christian Science Monitor, August 5, 1985, p. 3; Eleanor Randolph, "Networks Turn Eye on Themselves: In Crisis, Restraint Viewed as Important but Dismissed as Impossible," Washington Post, June 30, 1985, p. A-25; America's Ordeal by Television: With the Beirut Hostages Free, Videoland Forgets Oh So Quickly," Washington Post, July 2, 1985, p. C1. On a related instance, NBC's interview of the lead Achille Lauro hijacker, which they secured on the grounds that they keep his location secret, see Philip Geyelin, "How to Protect a Terrorist," Washington Post, May 19, 1986, p. A-15.
162. Again, in the updating of Hoffman's book, much of the case study of TWA 847 has fallen away. But it is worth tracking down the 1998 edition of the book for the chapter, "Terrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion," pp. 131–155, for so much of it remains relevant.
163. Brigitte L. Nacos, Terrorism and the Media: From the Iran Hostage Crisis to the Oklahoma City Bombing, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994 ed., p. 50. She also quotes CBS's Tom Fenton as reporting that during the embassy siege in Tehran, reporters were offered unpublished classified documents from the embassy in return for 5 minutes of unedited air time.
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