NPR's "On the Media" ran an interview over the weekend with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales about how the site kept news of New York Times reporter David Rohde's kidnapping out of its pages.

One of the things that helped, Wales said, was that the Times was so successful in getting other news organizations to keep quiet about it that there weren't any official sources to cite.

"[I]t was pretty easy for our volunteers to look at it," Wales told host Bob Garfield, "and say, well, really under the rules of Wikipedia we've never considered ourselves a wide open free speech forum where people can post speculative things. We just look at it and we say, well yes, there was one report here and a couple of blogs, but really it's not being reported anywhere else, so who knows.

"Now, of course, I knew that it was true because The New York Times contacted me to ask what could be done about it, but it's not my obligation to report everything I know, just as it wouldn't be for anybody."

Garfield then asked Wales whether Wikipedia had created "any kind of fixed policy on circumstances like this, trying to anticipate what to do if something like this should arise again."

Wales: "No, we really haven't because every case is going to be somewhat different."

(Via Romanesko)

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons