Over the weekend, news broke that Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter David Rohde had escaped from captivity in Afghanistan, where he had been held for the past seven months.

The news brought relief to a community overwhelmed by stories of violence against and arrests of journalists in Iran and the recent conviction of American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee in North Korea.

But after the relief subsided, other questions arose. Why had no one reported Rohde’s kidnapping? According to Editor & Publisher editor Greg Mitchell, at least 40 news outlets knew about Rohde’s captivity, but they decided not to broadcast the news at the request of the Times. Mitchell said he worried that keeping the kidnapping a secret would jeopardize other reporters heading to the region, but ultimately decided it was the best cause of action in this case.

“I wonder now if a great debate will break out over media ethics in not reporting a story involving one of their own when they so eagerly rush out piece about nearly everything else,” Mitchell said in a post on The Huffington Post. “I imagine some may claim that the blackout would not have held if a smaller paper, not the mighty New York Times, had been involved. Or is saving this life (actually two, there was a local reporter also snatched) self-evidently justification enough?”

Did the press make the right decision to not report David Rohde’s kidnapping?(online surveys)

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EXCLUSIVE

On the heels of Angelina Jolie‘s depiction of Daniel Pearl widow Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart, Glamour is planning a book based on the “Global Diary” columns Marian has written for the magazine. The book, In Search of Hope, is due in November from Brooklyn-based powerHouse books and will include a foreword written by Jolie. Glamour says all of the proceeds from In Search of Hope will be donated to charity.

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Yesterday, NBC announced that Stone Phillips would be leaving the network — a cost-cutting move that, according to USA Today, favors more versatile on-air talent than the one-dimensional Stone. Versatile, like Ann Curry, who showed some of that versatility today on Today: she made Angelina Jolie cry.

Maybe if Stone Phillips had been able to make, say, Brad Pitt cry, things would’ve been different.