Do you think that these media outlets would have given the same consideration if this were a government employee?

Media Agreed to Stay Silent on Kidnapping of Reporter David Rohde:

"Still, the unusual arrangement raises questions about whether journalists were giving special treatment to one of their own. 'It certainly could appear that way, but it's more complicated than that when a human life is at stake,' said Phil Bronstein, former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. 'It does involve a news organization keeping quiet and asking others to keep quiet. What shocks me is that it was so successful.'

John Daniszewski, an Associated Press senior managing editor, said that 'it is not the most comfortable position to be in. Your instinct is to publish what you know. But we felt there was just too high a risk something would happen to him.' Daniszewski said the AP also withheld news around the same time when a staffer for a nongovernmental organization was briefly kidnapped in Afghanistan."