Interesting, I always thought Centanni and Wiig were treating the kidnapping of their employees as more important than the kidnapping of other people by honoring some sort of plan by the authorities to get the men back and not turning the kidnapping into an occassion for frenzied and speculative around-the-clock reporting.

Fern,
I think you mean Fox News low-keying the kidnapping of Centanni and Wiig rather than a frenzied and speculative around-the-clock reporting. You make a good point, and I believe that Fox has been doing that. However, if you'll recall the Jill Carroll case, and others, much pressure was put on the kidnappers by the media coverage, and in the case of Fox's journalists - the other media outlets have actually been rather open about their lack of coverage of the Centanni and Wiig kidnapping - actually stating in some cases that it is because of their dislike of Fox.

As to which works better to free the hostages, mass coverage or quiet work behind the scenes - I quess one approach could be just as good as the other. In either approach, the outcomes are as often as not, quite disappointing.

Ack, you're right, that's what I meant. I really shouldn't try and do more than one thing at a time. Apparently talking on the phone and flipping through my feed reader are not compatible. ;-)

I didn't realize any of the other MSM outlets had actually admitted that they are ignoring the story because they dislike Fox. That's awful. I'm no big fan of CNN but I don't wish harm on their employees and I wouldn't ignore a newsworthy story about one of their employees just because I dislike who the employee works for (if I was a MSM person with the power to decide such things). I just assumed that the other media outlets weren't covering the story because there was not much to discuss.

As to which method is more effective, I guess I'm with you: frustrated that there isn't a good one-size-fits-all way to deal with terrorist kidnappers. Media pressure is, of course, only effective if the terrorists who kidnapped the journalist (or other type of victim) care about what the media or the media's viewership thinks. If, however, their goal is to scare the living day lights out of the western world/western media, then perhaps ignoring the terrorists is denying them what they want, and thus a sometimes effective alternative. I just hope Fox chose wisely and for wise reasons. And I hope the other MSM outlets who are ignoring the story because of their dislike of Fox don't end up contributing to anything bad happening to Centanni and Wiig.

Fern,
Fox appears to be soft-peddling the terrorists in framing the kidnapped journalists as "guests," and like you, I hope it works in this case. However, as I've blogged here and at Hyscience, there's a sinister smell to this - it's got Zarqawi written all over it, and although he's dead, it smells like the al-Qaeda "Iraq" group that's known to be operating in Gaza. If so, the guys are more likely to be killed than freed. The demands were a statement, nothing specific was asked for. It was given in general, that's bad news for our side.