David S. Rohde
Encyclopedia
David Stephenson Rohde is an American
author and investigative journalist
for Thomson Reuters
. While a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor
, he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting
in 1996 for his coverage of the Srebrenica massacre
. From July 2002 until December 2004, he was co-chief of the Times ' South Asia
bureau, based in New Delhi
, India
. He shared a second Pulitzer Prize
for Times 2008 team coverage of Afghanistan
and Pakistan
.
While in Afghanistan, Rohde was kidnapped by members of the Taliban
in November 2008, but managed to escape in June 2009 after seven months in captivity. While he was in captivity, The New York Times collaborated with a number of media outlets
, including al-Jazeera and Wikipedia
, to remove news of the kidnapping from the public eye.
. He is a graduate of Fryeburg Academy
, a boarding school
located in Fryeburg, Maine, attended Bates College
, transferred to, and earned his Bachelor of Arts
at Brown University
in 1990. He is married to Kristen Mulvihill, a picture editor
for Cosmopolitan
magazine.
World News Tonight
program from June 1990 to August 1991 and as a production associate for ABC's New Turning Point from January to July 1993. He has also worked as a freelance
reporter based in the Baltic republics, Cuba
, and Syria
. He served as a county and municipal reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer
from July 1993 to June 1994 before joining The Christian Science Monitor. He initially covered national news, reporting from Boston
, New York City
, and Washington, D.C.
. In November 1994, he was sent to Zagreb
, Croatia
, to work as the newspaper's Eastern Europe
an correspondent, in which role he helped to expose the ethnic cleansing
and genocide
of the Muslim
population of eastern Bosnia. He joined The New York Times in April 1996 and worked for them through mid 2011. He reported from Afghanistan for the first three months of the US-led war against the Taliban
and served as co-chief of Times's South Asia bureau from 2002 to 2005. More recently he worked as a member of the Times's investigations department in New York City.
He is described by his Times colleagues as "an intrepid yet unassuming reporter who conducts himself modestly around the office, predictably attired in neatly ironed Oxford shirts and, often, his weathered Boston Red Sox
cap."
in August 1995, a month after the fall of the towns to the Army of the Republika Srpska. He reported seeing human bones, "Muslim prayer beads, clothing and still legible receipts and election ballots from Srebrenica", as well as shell casings and ammunition boxes in the vicinity of three large mass graves. He described being told that Bosnian Serb troops were hunting down and summarily executing Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks
) from the town. He subsequently located eyewitnesses to the massacre and wrote about the circumstances that led up to the killings.
He returned to the Republika Srpska
in October 1995 to follow up his article on the Srebrenica massacre but was secretly arrested by Bosnian Serb authorities on October 29 in the town of Zvornik
, around 80 miles from Sarajevo
. He was charged with "illegal border crossing and staying on the territory of the Republika Srpska and for falsifying documents". He was held captive in the Bosnian Serb-held town of Bijeljina
for ten days, during which he was repeatedly interrogated, harassed and kept in a 10-foot-by-20-foot (3m by 7m) cell with five other inmates for over 23 hours a day. Rohde was sentenced to 15 days' imprisonment on the first two charges and was due to be sentenced on the spying charge before he was released. The trial had been held in Serbo-Croatian and, although a translator was present, there was no defense lawyer and no US diplomatic representation as required by the Vienna Convention
. The espionage charge, the most serious of the three, was "punishable by three to 15 years (imprisonment) in peacetime and 10 years to death in wartime."
Rohde's capture was not initially admitted by the Bosnian Serb authorities, who gave conflicting answers as to whether he had been detained and where he was being held. Five days after he was taken prisoner, the Bosnian Serb news agency issued a statement on his capture. The US Government subsequently brought to bear intense diplomatic pressure to release him. A key role was played by Kati Marton
, an author and journalist married to the US envoy Richard Holbrooke
, who was negotiating with the Serbian president Slobodan Milošević
to end the Bosnian War
. Marton, who was at the time the chairwoman of the Committee to Protect Journalists
, intervened repeatedly during the talks that led to the Dayton Agreement
to persuade Milošević to use his influence to secure Rohde's release. The US Secretary of State Warren Christopher
was also involved in pressing for Rohde's release at the Dayton talks. A variety of other political and journalistic figures were also involved in campaigning on Rohde's behalf, including Senator Bob Dole
, Peter Jennings
, Ted Koppel
, and David Frost
. Rohde was subsequently pardoned by order of the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadžić
in what Karadžić characterized as a goodwill gesture.
Following his release, Rohde reported that he had reached Srebrenica and found substantial evidence of the massacre at four of six of the mass grave sites previously identified by US reconnaissance aircraft and satellites and commented: "A final, accurate accounting of the Srebrenica massacres will only come if Sahanici and the other five sites are dredged for the truth." He described the circumstances of his arrest: "This correspondent changed the date of issue on a Bosnian Serb press accreditation from 19/12/94 to 29/10/95 and used it to pass through Bosnian Serb checkpoints and reach the area. This correspondent was arrested at the execution site by Bosnian Serb police, stripped of all documents and photos taken of the area, accused of espionage, and jailed for 10 days." His ordeal in captivity and the subsequent negotiations to free him were described in detail in a three-part special report published a few days later.
Rohde's reporting from Bosnia, according to the British journalist Henry Porter
, "had a deep effect on the journalists who had covered the Bosnian civil war. They became not so much militarised as passionately committed to fighting Milosevic's regime ... if Rohde had not - at some personal risk - set out to prove the rumours about the massacres, a great truth would have been buried along with the thousands of men from Srebrenica." Porter observed that "the extent of the slaughter might not have emerged if it had not been for the bravery of David Rohde."
Rohde went on to testify before the US House of Representatives Committee on Security and Cooperation in Europe in December 1995 on what he had seen at Srebrenica. He returned to Srebrenica with a group of Western reporters at the start of April 1996, reporting that "approximately 70 percent of the larger of the two mass graves and approximately 50 percent of the smaller of the two have been recently dug up" and that other evidence that he had seen the previous October had been removed.
Also in April 1996, Rohde won the Polk Award for foreign reporting, being cited for "risking his life to uncover the Srebrenica massacres of Bosnian Muslims, the worst genocide in Europe since the Holocaust." Shortly afterwards, Rohde was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize "for his persistent on-site reporting of the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.
In 1997, Rohde published a widely acclaimed account of the massacre, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II (published in paperback as A Safe Area: Srebrenica - Europe's Worst Massacre Since the Second World War). It was described as a "masterly" account of how "good - but conflicted and weakly held - Western intentions were swept away by the racist imperatives of the Serb leaders." Writing in The Guardian
, Julian Borger declared it to be "essential reading" and commented: "It is journalism at its committed best - painstaking, compassionate, full of telling detail and rigorous in its judgments."
Rohde's work was the subject of study by a class in "Elements of International Reporting" at Columbia University's journalism school
in spring 2001. The study explained: "We felt that Rohde's work was ideal for a case study in reporting on gross human rights violations, presenting opportunities to study both the professional techniques and the moral issues that pertain to such work."
. He has reported among other things on the hardships endured by men detained and released from the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
. During 2004 and 2005 he wrote extensively on the treatment of detainees at the notorious Abu Ghraib
prison in Baghdad
and at the Bagram Air Base
in Afghanistan. He also broke the story of the full extent of the US Government's roundup of American Muslims following the September 11, 2001 attacks
. The American Prospect
noted:
In April 2009, Rohde shared in a second Pulitzer Prize, awarded to the staff of the New York Times for "its masterful, groundbreaking coverage of America's deepening military and political challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, reporting frequently done under perilous conditions."
of Rohde's kidnapping has caused a wider debate about the responsibility to report news in a timely manner. The debate has included Wikipedia itself due to its co-founder Jimmy Wales
being asked to maintain the blackout on Wikipedia by the New York Times, which he did through several administrators.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author and investigative journalist
Investigative journalism
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, often involving crime, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Investigative journalism...
for Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters Corporation is a provider of information for the world's businesses and professionals and is created by the Thomson Corporation's purchase of Reuters Group on 17 April 2008. Thomson Reuters is headquartered at 3 Times Square, New York City, USA...
. While a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...
, he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting
Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting
This Pulitzer Prize has been awarded since 1942 for a distinguished example of reporting on international affairs, including United Nations correspondence. In its first six years , it was called the Pulitzer Prize for Telegraphic Reporting - International...
in 1996 for his coverage of the Srebrenica massacre
Srebrenica massacre
The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide, refers to the July 1995 killing, during the Bosnian War, of more than 8,000 Bosniaks , mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by units of the Army of Republika Srpska under the command of...
. From July 2002 until December 2004, he was co-chief of the Times ' South Asia
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
bureau, based in New Delhi
New Delhi
New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. He shared a second Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for Times 2008 team coverage of Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
.
While in Afghanistan, Rohde was kidnapped by members of the Taliban
Kidnapping of David Rohde
New York Times journalist David Stephenson Rohde and two associates were kidnapped by members of the Taliban in November 2008. Rohde was in Afghanistan doing research for a book...
in November 2008, but managed to escape in June 2009 after seven months in captivity. While he was in captivity, The New York Times collaborated with a number of media outlets
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
, including al-Jazeera and Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, to remove news of the kidnapping from the public eye.
Life and work
Rohde is a native of MaineMaine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
. He is a graduate of Fryeburg Academy
Fryeburg Academy
Fryeburg Academy, founded 1792, is one of the oldest private schools in the United States. It is located in Fryeburg, Maine. One of the first headmasters was Daniel Webster, who taught at the school for a year....
, a boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
located in Fryeburg, Maine, attended Bates College
Bates College
Bates College is a highly selective, private liberal arts college located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. and was most recently ranked 21st in the nation in the 2011 US News Best Liberal Arts Colleges rankings. The college was founded in 1855 by abolitionists...
, transferred to, and earned his Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
at Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
in 1990. He is married to Kristen Mulvihill, a picture editor
Picture Editor
A picture editor, sometimes known as a photo editor, is a professional who collects, reviews, and chooses photographs and/or illustrations for publication in alignment with preset guidelines. Publications include, but are not limited to, websites, books, magazines, newspapers, art galleries, museum...
for Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan (magazine)
Cosmopolitan is an international magazine for women. It was first published in 1886 in the United States as a family magazine, was later transformed into a literary magazine and eventually became a women's magazine in the late 1960s...
magazine.
Reporting
Rohde worked as a production secretary for the ABC NewsABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
World News Tonight
World News with Charles Gibson
ABC World News is the flagship daily evening program of ABC News, the news division of the American Broadcasting Company television network in the United States. Currently, the weekday editions are anchored by Diane Sawyer and the weekend editions are anchored by David Muir. The program has been...
program from June 1990 to August 1991 and as a production associate for ABC's New Turning Point from January to July 1993. He has also worked as a freelance
Freelancer
A freelancer, freelance worker, or freelance is somebody who is self-employed and is not committed to a particular employer long term. These workers are often represented by a company or an agency that resells their labor and that of others to its clients with or without project management and...
reporter based in the Baltic republics, Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, and Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
. He served as a county and municipal reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...
from July 1993 to June 1994 before joining The Christian Science Monitor. He initially covered national news, reporting from Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
. In November 1994, he was sent to Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
, Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
, to work as the newspaper's Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
an correspondent, in which role he helped to expose the ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
and genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
of the Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
population of eastern Bosnia. He joined The New York Times in April 1996 and worked for them through mid 2011. He reported from Afghanistan for the first three months of the US-led war against the Taliban
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
and served as co-chief of Times's South Asia bureau from 2002 to 2005. More recently he worked as a member of the Times's investigations department in New York City.
He is described by his Times colleagues as "an intrepid yet unassuming reporter who conducts himself modestly around the office, predictably attired in neatly ironed Oxford shirts and, often, his weathered Boston Red Sox
Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox are a professional baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of Major League Baseball’s American League Eastern Division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight charter franchises, the Red Sox's home ballpark has been Fenway Park since . The "Red Sox"...
cap."
Srebrenica
Rohde was the first outside eyewitness of the aftermath of the Srebrenica massacre when he traveled to the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica and ZepaŽepa
Žepa is a town in the east of Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina in the municipality of Rogatica. Žepa is located northeast of Rogatica itself, southwest of Srebrenica and northwest of Višegrad...
in August 1995, a month after the fall of the towns to the Army of the Republika Srpska. He reported seeing human bones, "Muslim prayer beads, clothing and still legible receipts and election ballots from Srebrenica", as well as shell casings and ammunition boxes in the vicinity of three large mass graves. He described being told that Bosnian Serb troops were hunting down and summarily executing Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks
Bosniaks
The Bosniaks or Bosniacs are a South Slavic ethnic group, living mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a smaller minority also present in other lands of the Balkan Peninsula especially in Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia...
) from the town. He subsequently located eyewitnesses to the massacre and wrote about the circumstances that led up to the killings.
He returned to the Republika Srpska
Republika Srpska
Republika Srpska is one of two main political entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina...
in October 1995 to follow up his article on the Srebrenica massacre but was secretly arrested by Bosnian Serb authorities on October 29 in the town of Zvornik
Zvornik
Zvornik is a city on the Drina river in northeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, located south of the town of Bijeljina in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The town Mali Zvornik lies directly across the river in Serbia, and not far north is Loznica.-History:Zvornik is first mentioned in 1410, although it was...
, around 80 miles from Sarajevo
Sarajevo
Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....
. He was charged with "illegal border crossing and staying on the territory of the Republika Srpska and for falsifying documents". He was held captive in the Bosnian Serb-held town of Bijeljina
Bijeljina
Bijeljina is a city and municipality in northeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. The city is the second largest in the Republika Srpska entity after Banja Luka and fifth largest city in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is situated on the flat rich plains of Semberija...
for ten days, during which he was repeatedly interrogated, harassed and kept in a 10-foot-by-20-foot (3m by 7m) cell with five other inmates for over 23 hours a day. Rohde was sentenced to 15 days' imprisonment on the first two charges and was due to be sentenced on the spying charge before he was released. The trial had been held in Serbo-Croatian and, although a translator was present, there was no defense lawyer and no US diplomatic representation as required by the Vienna Convention
Vienna Convention on Consular Relations
The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963 is an international treaty that defines a framework for consular relations between independent countries...
. The espionage charge, the most serious of the three, was "punishable by three to 15 years (imprisonment) in peacetime and 10 years to death in wartime."
Rohde's capture was not initially admitted by the Bosnian Serb authorities, who gave conflicting answers as to whether he had been detained and where he was being held. Five days after he was taken prisoner, the Bosnian Serb news agency issued a statement on his capture. The US Government subsequently brought to bear intense diplomatic pressure to release him. A key role was played by Kati Marton
Kati Marton
Kati Marton is a Hungarian-American author and journalist. Her career has included reporting for ABC News as a foreign correspondent and National Public Radio, where she started as a production assistant 1971 in her 20s, as well as print journalism and writing a number of books.She is the former...
, an author and journalist married to the US envoy Richard Holbrooke
Richard Holbrooke
Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke was an American diplomat, magazine editor, author, professor, Peace Corps official, and investment banker....
, who was negotiating with the Serbian president Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...
to end the Bosnian War
Bosnian War
The Bosnian War or the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995. The war involved several sides...
. Marton, who was at the time the chairwoman of the Committee to Protect Journalists
Committee to Protect Journalists
The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent nonprofit organisation based in New York City that promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists.-History:A group of U.S...
, intervened repeatedly during the talks that led to the Dayton Agreement
Dayton Agreement
The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement, Dayton Accords, Paris Protocol or Dayton-Paris Agreement, is the peace agreement reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio in November 1995, and formally signed in Paris on...
to persuade Milošević to use his influence to secure Rohde's release. The US Secretary of State Warren Christopher
Warren Christopher
Warren Minor Christopher was an American lawyer, diplomat and politician. During Bill Clinton's first term as President, Christopher served as the 63rd Secretary of State. He also served as Deputy Attorney General in the Lyndon Johnson administration, and as Deputy Secretary of State in the Jimmy...
was also involved in pressing for Rohde's release at the Dayton talks. A variety of other political and journalistic figures were also involved in campaigning on Rohde's behalf, including Senator Bob Dole
Bob Dole
Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole is an American attorney and politician. Dole represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1996, was Gerald Ford's Vice Presidential running mate in the 1976 presidential election, and was Senate Majority Leader from 1985 to 1987 and in 1995 and 1996...
, Peter Jennings
Peter Jennings
Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings, CM was a Canadian American journalist and news anchor. He was the sole anchor of ABC's World News Tonight from 1983 until his death in 2005 of complications from lung cancer...
, Ted Koppel
Ted Koppel
Edward James "Ted" Koppel is an English-born American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline from the program's inception in 1980 until his retirement in late 2005. After leaving Nightline, Koppel worked as managing editor for the Discovery Channel before resigning in 2008...
, and David Frost
David Frost
Sir David Frost is a British broadcaster.David Frost may also refer to:*David Frost , South African golfer*David Frost , classical record producer*David Frost *Dave Frost, baseball pitcher...
. Rohde was subsequently pardoned by order of the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadžić
Radovan Karadžic
Radovan Karadžić is a former Bosnian Serb politician. He is detained in the United Nations Detention Unit of Scheveningen, accused of war crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats during the Siege of Sarajevo, as well as ordering the Srebrenica massacre.Educated as a...
in what Karadžić characterized as a goodwill gesture.
Following his release, Rohde reported that he had reached Srebrenica and found substantial evidence of the massacre at four of six of the mass grave sites previously identified by US reconnaissance aircraft and satellites and commented: "A final, accurate accounting of the Srebrenica massacres will only come if Sahanici and the other five sites are dredged for the truth." He described the circumstances of his arrest: "This correspondent changed the date of issue on a Bosnian Serb press accreditation from 19/12/94 to 29/10/95 and used it to pass through Bosnian Serb checkpoints and reach the area. This correspondent was arrested at the execution site by Bosnian Serb police, stripped of all documents and photos taken of the area, accused of espionage, and jailed for 10 days." His ordeal in captivity and the subsequent negotiations to free him were described in detail in a three-part special report published a few days later.
Rohde's reporting from Bosnia, according to the British journalist Henry Porter
Henry Porter (journalist)
Henry Porter is an English author and journalist. He is a writer of thrillers and a regular columnist for The Observer newspaper. He is also the British editor of Vanity Fair....
, "had a deep effect on the journalists who had covered the Bosnian civil war. They became not so much militarised as passionately committed to fighting Milosevic's regime ... if Rohde had not - at some personal risk - set out to prove the rumours about the massacres, a great truth would have been buried along with the thousands of men from Srebrenica." Porter observed that "the extent of the slaughter might not have emerged if it had not been for the bravery of David Rohde."
Rohde went on to testify before the US House of Representatives Committee on Security and Cooperation in Europe in December 1995 on what he had seen at Srebrenica. He returned to Srebrenica with a group of Western reporters at the start of April 1996, reporting that "approximately 70 percent of the larger of the two mass graves and approximately 50 percent of the smaller of the two have been recently dug up" and that other evidence that he had seen the previous October had been removed.
Also in April 1996, Rohde won the Polk Award for foreign reporting, being cited for "risking his life to uncover the Srebrenica massacres of Bosnian Muslims, the worst genocide in Europe since the Holocaust." Shortly afterwards, Rohde was awarded the 1996 Pulitzer Prize "for his persistent on-site reporting of the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.
In 1997, Rohde published a widely acclaimed account of the massacre, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II (published in paperback as A Safe Area: Srebrenica - Europe's Worst Massacre Since the Second World War). It was described as a "masterly" account of how "good - but conflicted and weakly held - Western intentions were swept away by the racist imperatives of the Serb leaders." Writing in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, Julian Borger declared it to be "essential reading" and commented: "It is journalism at its committed best - painstaking, compassionate, full of telling detail and rigorous in its judgments."
Rohde's work was the subject of study by a class in "Elements of International Reporting" at Columbia University's journalism school
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is one of Columbia's graduate and professional schools. It offers three degree programs: Master of Science in journalism , Master of Arts in journalism and a Ph.D. in communications...
in spring 2001. The study explained: "We felt that Rohde's work was ideal for a case study in reporting on gross human rights violations, presenting opportunities to study both the professional techniques and the moral issues that pertain to such work."
Detainees
While The New York Times, Rohde has written about peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan and IraqIraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
. He has reported among other things on the hardships endured by men detained and released from the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
. During 2004 and 2005 he wrote extensively on the treatment of detainees at the notorious Abu Ghraib
Abu Ghraib
The city of Abu Ghraib in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq is located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000. The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghraib...
prison in Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
and at the Bagram Air Base
Bagram Air Base
Bagram Airfield, also referred to as Bagram Air Base, is a militarized airport and housing complex that is located next to the ancient city of Bagram, southeast of Charikar in Parwan province of Afghanistan. The base is run by a US Army division headed by a major general. A large part of the base,...
in Afghanistan. He also broke the story of the full extent of the US Government's roundup of American Muslims following the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
. The American Prospect
The American Prospect
The American Prospect is a monthly American political magazine dedicated to American liberalism. Based in Washington, DC, The American Prospect is a journal "of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics" which focuses on United States politics...
noted:
In April 2009, Rohde shared in a second Pulitzer Prize, awarded to the staff of the New York Times for "its masterful, groundbreaking coverage of America's deepening military and political challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, reporting frequently done under perilous conditions."
Kidnapping
In November 2008, while in Afghanistan doing research for a book, Rohde and two associates were kidnapped by members of the Taliban. After being held captive for seven months and ten days, in June 2009 Rohde and one of his associates escaped and made their way to safety. The other associate escaped a month later. During his captivity, Rohde's colleagues at The New York Times appealed to other members of the news media not to publish any stories relating to the abduction. The resulting media blackoutMedia blackout
Media blackout refers to the censorship of news related to a certain topic, particularly in mass media, for any reason. A media blackout may be voluntary, or may in some countries be enforced by the government or state. The latter case is controversial in peacetime, as some regard it as a human...
of Rohde's kidnapping has caused a wider debate about the responsibility to report news in a timely manner. The debate has included Wikipedia itself due to its co-founder Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....
being asked to maintain the blackout on Wikipedia by the New York Times, which he did through several administrators.
External links
- Held by The Taliban: A Reporting Trip Becomes a Kidnapping - Interactive feature from The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...