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{{Short description|American author and investigative journalist}}
'''David Stephenson Rohde''' (born 1967) is an ] investigative journalist for '']''.
{{Redirect|David Rohde|the political scientist|David W. Rohde}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2014}}
{{Infobox person
| name = David S. Rohde
| image = Pulitzer2018-david-rohde-20180530-wp.jpg
| caption = Rohde at the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes
| birth_name = David Stephenson Rohde
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1967|8|7}}
| birth_place = ], United States
| death_date =
| death_place =
| education = ] <small>(], 1990)</small>
| occupation = ]
| alias =
| title =
| family =
| spouse = Kristen Mulvihill
| domestic_partner =
| children =
| relatives =
| credits = 1996 ] winner<br>2010 ] winner
| URL =
}}


'''David Stephenson Rohde''' (born August 7, 1967) is an ] author and ], he is the former online news director for '']'' and now serves as Senior Executive Editor, National Security, for ].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Johnson |first1=Ted |title=David Rohde To Join NBC News From The New Yorker |url=https://deadline.com/2023/04/nbc-news-hires-david-rohde-national-security-1235336277/ |website=] |date=April 25, 2023 |access-date=25 April 2023}}</ref> While a reporter for '']'', he won the ] in 1996 for his coverage of the ]. From 2002 until 2005, he was co-chief of '']''{{'}} ] bureau, based in ], ]. He later contributed to the newspaper's team coverage of ] and ] that received the 2009 ] for International Reporting and was a finalist in his own right in the category in 2010.<ref name="NYT01">{{cite news |title=Times Reporter Escapes Taliban After 7 Months |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/world/asia/21taliban.html |work=]|date=June 20, 2009 |access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref><ref> pulitzer.org</ref> He is also a global affairs analyst for ].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1701/24/cnr.20.html|title=CNN Transcripts|work=]|date=January 24, 2017|access-date=March 4, 2017}}</ref>
From July 2002 to December 2004, he was co-chief of the ''Times'' 's South Asia bureau, based in ]<ref name="saja"></ref>.


While in Afghanistan, Rohde was ] 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 ], including ]<ref name="kurtz"/> and Misplaced Pages,<ref name = "Peña-Misplaced Pages">{{Cite news | last=Pérez-Peña | first = Richard | title = Keeping News of Kidnapping Off Misplaced Pages | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/technology/internet/29wiki.html | work = The New York Times | date = June 28, 2009 | access-date = June 29, 2009}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/good-faith-collaboration|title=Good Faith Collaboration|last=Reagle|first=Joseph|website=mitpress.mit.edu|series=History and Foundations of Information Science|date=August 27, 2010|publisher=The MIT Press|pages=89–90|isbn=9780262014472|language=en|access-date=2020-04-11}}</ref> to remove news of the kidnapping from the public eye. This was done to decrease his value as a hostage and bargaining chip, and so increase his chances of eventual survival.
While a reporter for '']'', he won the ] in 1996 for his coverage of the ].


==Background==
His work exposed the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the region of Srebrenica, and was hailed as some of the finest reporting on human rights abuses ever. His reporting was used in programs to teach international reporting skills to young journalists at Columbia University, where officials said of his work: "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."<ref>http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/nelson/rohde/intro.html</ref>
Rohde is a native of ].<ref name="CUSJ01"/> He is a graduate of ], a ] located in ], Maine.<ref>{{cite news|last=Pushard|first=Craig|title=Reporter Makes Daring Escape From Afghanistan|url=http://www.wlbz2.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=106177|publisher=]|date=June 21, 2009|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref> He attended ] before transferring to ], where he received a ] in history in 1990.<ref>{{cite book | last = Brennan | first = Elizabeth | title = Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners | publisher = Oryx Press | location = Phoenix | year = 1998 | isbn = 1-57356-111-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/whoswhoofpulitze00bren| url-access = registration | page = | quote = Martin Bernheimer brown university. }}</ref> He is married to Kristen Mulvihill, a ] for '']'' magazine.<ref name="Beaumont">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/21/new-york-times-reporter-taliban|last=Beaumont|first=Peter|title=Kidnapped US reporter makes dramatic escape from Taliban|work=]|publisher=]|date=June 21, 2009|access-date=June 30, 2009 | location=London}}</ref>


===Reporting===
At The New York Times, he has written about peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he reported on the hardships endured by men who had been detained and released from the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Rohde worked as a production secretary for the ] '']'' 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 ] reporter based in the ], ], and ]. He served as a county and municipal reporter for '']'' from July 1993 to June 1994 before joining ''The Christian Science Monitor''. He initially covered national news, reporting from ], ], and ]<ref name="Goodrich-Bosnian Serbs">{{cite news|last=Goodrich|first=Lawrence J.|title=Bosnian Serbs Free Monitor Reporter|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/1995/1109/09011.html|work=]|date=November 9, 1995|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref> In November 1994, he was sent to ], ], to work as the newspaper's ]an correspondent,<ref>{{cite news|last=Goodrich|first=Lawrence J.|title=Negotiations Continue To Free Monitor Writer Held by Bosnian Serbs|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/1995/1106/06012.html|work=The Christian Science Monitor|date=November 6, 1995|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref> in which role he helped to expose the ] and ] of the ] population of eastern ]. He joined ''The New York Times'' in April 1996<ref>{{cite news|author=Bickelhaupt|first=Susan|title=About Face, All Over Again|work=]|date=April 24, 1996}}</ref> and worked for them through mid-2011. He reported from Afghanistan for the first three months of the US-led ] and served as co-chief of the ''Times''{{'}}s South Asia bureau from 2002 to 2005. From 2005 to 2011, he was a member of the ''Times''{{'}}s investigations department in New York City.<ref name="NYT01"/> Before joining ''The New Yorker'' in May 2017, he worked for ] in a variety of capacities, including foreign affairs columnist (2011-2013), investigative reporter (2014-2015) and national security investigations editor (2015-2017).<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-rohde-00ab5614 |title=David S. Rohde |website=]}}</ref>


He was 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 ] cap."<ref name="NYT01" />
David has been praised as a fair and compassionate reporter who is willing to endure personal hardship in doing his work. While documenting the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia, he was detained by Serbian authorities, who interrogated him for 10 days and accused him of being a spy for the Bosnian Muslims. An international campaign involving reporters and non-governmental experts throughout the world led to his release.


====Srebrenica====
In 2002, David appeared on the NPR show, All Things Considered, to discuss his reporting on men from Afghanistan who had been detained in Guantanamo Bay.<ref> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=827178</ref> He told the host, Jacki Lyden:
Rohde was the first outside eyewitness of the aftermath of the Srebrenica massacre<ref>{{cite news|last=O'Connor|first=Mike|title=NATO Says It Didn't Allow Grave Site to Be Disturbed|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/15/world/nato-says-it-didn-t-allow-grave-site-to-be-disturbed.html|date=April 15, 1996|access-date=June 29, 2009 | work=The New York Times}}</ref> when he traveled to the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica and ] in August 1995, a month after the fall of the towns to the ]. 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 (]) from the town.<ref>{{cite news|last=Crossette|first=Barbara|title=From Overrun Enclave, New Evidence of Mass Killings|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/19/world/from-overrun-enclave-new-evidence-of-mass-killings.html|work=The New York Times|date=August 19, 1995|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Rohde|first=David|title=How a Serb Massacre Was Exposed|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/1995/0825/25011.html|work=The Christian Science Monitor|date=August 25, 1995|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref> He subsequently located eyewitnesses to the massacre and wrote about the circumstances that led up to the killings.<ref name="Goodrich-Bosnian Serbs" />


He returned to the ] 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 ], around 80 miles from ]. He was charged with "illegal border crossing and staying on the territory of the Republika Srpska and for falsifying documents".<ref>{{cite news|last=Roane|first=Kit R.|title=U.S. Reporter Held in Bosnia Said to Be Well|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/06/world/us-reporter-held-in-bosnia-said-to-be-well.html|work=The New York Times|date=November 6, 1995|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref> He was held captive in the Bosnian Serb-held town of ] 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.<ref name="Roane-Bosnian Serbs">{{cite news|last=Roane|first=Kit R.|title=Bosnia Serbs Free U.S. Newsman After 9 Days|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/09/world/bosnia-serbs-free-us-newsman-after-9-days.html?scp=7&sq=%22david+Rohde%22&st=nyt|work=The New York Times|date=November 9, 1995|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref> The trial had been held in Serbo-Croatian and, although a translator was present,<ref name="Grier">{{cite news|last=Grier|first=Peter|title=Quest Launched for Reporter's Freedom as He Paces Behind Bars in Bosnian Serb Jail|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/1995/1121/21015.html|work=The Christian Science Monitor|date=November 21, 1995|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref> there was no defense lawyer and no US diplomatic representation as required by the ]. 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."<ref name="Goodrich-Bosnian Serbs" />
"Their biggest complaint was being kept in small cells that were about 8 foot-by-8 foot in size and never let out of the cells except for two 15-minute periods a week, where they were allowed to walk around briefly outside. Otherwise, they were in that cell for 24 hours a day. They said there was sweltering heat. They were repeatedly interrogated. They did not complain about the interrogations. They did not say they were beaten or threatened. But essentially being kept in the cells and the isolation--all of them complained about not getting letters from their families, and the fact that they just never knew how long they would be there, would they ever be tried, just sort of wore away at them."
LYDEN: And so how did they feel about the fact that they had been detained for as long as they were, 11 months, and now were being released? Were they angry?
Mr. ROHDE: They were. I mean, particularly, these two older men who were both picked up in American raids pretty much after most of the fighting in Afghanistan was over. And they couldn't see how they could be considered combatants in the war given their age. One of them had a cane and has difficulty walking, but they still were sent to Guantanamo Bay for at least six months.


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 ], an author and journalist married to the US envoy ], who was negotiating with the Serbian president ] to end the ]. Marton, who was at the time the chairwoman of the ], intervened repeatedly during the talks that led to the ] to persuade Milošević to use his influence to secure Rohde's release.<ref name="Dobbs">{{cite news|last=Dobbs|first=Michael|title=For Rohde, the Power of a Well-Placed Writer Paid Off|newspaper=The Washington Post|date=November 11, 1995}}</ref> The ] ] was also involved in pressing for Rohde's release at the Dayton talks.<ref>{{cite news|title=Test Case for Clinton|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/1995/1103/03202.html|date=November 3, 1995|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref> A variety of other political and journalistic figures were also involved in campaigning on Rohde's behalf, including Senator ], ], ], ], and ].<ref>{{cite news|title=Heartfelt Thanks|work=The Christian Science Monitor|date=November 10, 1995}}</ref> Rohde was subsequently pardoned by order of the Bosnian Serb leader, ] in what Karadžić characterized as a goodwill gesture.<ref>{{cite news|title=Bosnian Serbs free American journalist|url=http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/Bosnia/updates/nov95/11-08/index.html|publisher=CNN|date=November 8, 1995|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref>
==Personal==

Rohde earned his B.A. at ]<ref></ref> in 1990. He is a native of Maine.<ref></ref>
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."<ref>{{cite news|last=Rohde|first=David|title=Graves Found That Confirm Bosnia Massacre|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/1995/1116/16012.html|work=The Christian Science Monitor|date=November 16, 1995|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Grier"/><ref>{{cite news|last=Grier|first=Peter|title=Into Bosnia's Killing Fields|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/1995/1117/17011.html|work=The Christian Science Monitor|date=November 16, 1995|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last=Grier|first=Peter|title=Bosnian Serb Officials Hold and Interrogate Monitor Reporter|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/1995/1120/20014.html|work=The Christian Science Monitor|date=November 20, 1995|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref>

Rohde's reporting from Bosnia, according to the British journalist ], "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."<ref>{{cite news|last=Porter|first=Henry|title=For the media, the war goes on|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jul/04/balkans|work=The Observer|date=July 4, 1999|access-date=June 29, 2009 | location=London}}</ref> Porter observed that "the extent of the slaughter might not have emerged if it had not been for the bravery of David Rohde."<ref>{{cite news|last=Porter|first=Henry|title=Days of shame|url=https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/nov/17/features11|work=The Observer|date=November 17, 1999|access-date=June 29, 2009 | location=London}}</ref>

Rohde went on to testify before the ] Committee on Security and Cooperation in Europe in December 1995 on what he had seen at Srebrenica.<ref>{{cite news|last=Moffett|first=George|title=Congress Delegation May Visit Bosnia Grave Sites|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/1995/1208/08042.html|date=December 8, 1995}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news|last=Rohde|first=David|title=Bosnian Massacre Sites Swept of Key Evidence|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/1996/0403/03012.html|work=The Christian Science Monitor|date=April 3, 1996|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref>

Also in April 1996, Rohde won the ] 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."<ref name=csmonitorpolk>{{cite news|title=Monitor Writer Wins Polk Award|url=http://www.csmonitor.com/1996/0311/11072.html|work=The Christian Science Monitor|date=March 11, 1996|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web|title=The 1996 Pulitzer Prize Winners – International Reporting|url=http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/1996-International-Reporting|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref>

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."<ref name=csmonitorpolk/> Writing in '']'', 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."<ref>{{cite news|last=Borger|first=Julian|title=Books: Doing nothing|work=The Guardian|date=September 4, 1997}}</ref>

Rohde's work was the subject of study by a class in "Elements of International Reporting" at ] 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."<ref name="CUSJ01">{{Cite web|url=http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/nelson/rohde/intro.html |title=The Rohde to Srebrenica |publisher=Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism |access-date=March 20, 2009 |last=Vickery |first=Tim}}</ref>

====Detainees====
While at ''The New York Times'', Rohde has written about the wars in Afghanistan and ]. He has reported among other things on the hardships endured by men detained and released from the ], ].<ref name="npr">{{Cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=827178 |title=Prisoners Released from Guantanamo |date=October 29, 2002 |access-date=June 29, 2009 |last=Lyden |first=Jacki |author-link=Jacki Lyden |publisher=] |work=]}}</ref> During 2004 and 2005 he wrote extensively on the treatment of detainees at the notorious ] in ] and at the ] in Afghanistan. He also broke the story of the full extent of the US Government's roundup of American Muslims following the ]. '']'' noted:

{{blockquote|Because of pervasive secrecy, little was known about how the detainees were treated until ''The New York Times'' published a story by David Rohde on January 20, 2003. It was datelined Karachi, Pakistan. Rohde had interviewed six Pakistani men deported from the United States after being detained in ]'s sweep.<ref>{{cite news|last=Anthony|first=Lewis|title=First They Came for the Muslims ...|url=http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=first_they_came_for_the_muslims_|date=March 1, 2003|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref>}}

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."<ref>{{cite web|title=The 2009 Pulitzer Prize Winners – International Reporting|url=http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2009-International-Reporting|access-date=June 29, 2009}}</ref>

==Kidnapping==
{{main|Kidnapping of David Rohde}}

In November 2008, while in Afghanistan doing research for a book, Rohde and two associates were kidnapped by members of the ]. 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.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/world/asia/22epilogue.html?_r=1 | work=The New York Times | title=Epilogue | first=David | last=Rohde | date=October 22, 2009}}</ref> 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 ] of Rohde's kidnapping has caused a wider debate about the responsibility to report news in a timely manner.<ref name="kurtz">{{cite news| last = Kurtz| first = Howard | author-link = Howard Kurtz | title = Media Stayed Silent on Kidnapping| newspaper = ] | date = June 21, 2009| url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR2009062001745.html | access-date = July 1, 2009}}</ref><ref name = "NPR">{{cite episode| title = Reporter's Escape From Taliban Spurs Ethics Debate| url = https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105775059| series = ] | airdate = June 22, 2009 | access-date = July 1, 2009}}</ref><ref name="Mitchell">{{cite web| last = Mitchell| first = Greg | author-link = Greg Mitchell | title = Why We Joined the Media Blackout on Kidnapping of NYT| website = ] | date = June 20, 2009 | url = http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/why-we-joined-the-media-b_b_218430.html | access-date = July 1, 2009}}</ref> ] co-founder ] complied with a request from the ''Times'' to maintain the blackout, which he did through several ].<ref name="Peña-Misplaced Pages" />

==Recognition==
In January 2012, Rohde was named one of the ]'s ].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.freemedia.at/awards/world-press-freedom-heroes/ |title=World Press Freedom Heroes: Symbols of courage in global journalism |year=2012 |publisher=] |access-date=January 26, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120116082802/http://www.freemedia.at/awards/world-press-freedom-heroes |archive-date=January 16, 2012 |df=mdy }}</ref>

==See also==
*]


==Bibliography== ==Bibliography==
* ''Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica.'' New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997. ISBN 0374253420 ISBN 978-0374253424 * ''Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II'' (1997; ]; {{ISBN|0-374-25342-0}} / 1998; ]; {{ISBN|0-8133-3533-7}})
* ''A Safe Area: Srebrenica – Europe's Worst Massacre Since the Holocaust'', 1997.
* David Rohde and Kristen Mulvihill, ''A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping from Two Sides'', 2010.
* ''In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America's "Deep State"'' (2020. W. W. Norton & Company)
* ''Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War Against Democracy'' , (2024. W. W. Norton & Company)


==External Links== ==References==
{{reflist|2}}
*


==Notes== ==External links==
*{{C-SPAN|40908}}
<references/>
* – Interactive feature from '']''

{{PulitzerPrize International Reporting}}
{{LivingstonAward International Reporting}}
{{Authority control}}


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Latest revision as of 12:23, 11 December 2024

American author and investigative journalist "David Rohde" redirects here. For the political scientist, see David W. Rohde.

David S. Rohde
Rohde at the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes
BornDavid Stephenson Rohde
(1967-08-07) August 7, 1967 (age 57)
Maine, United States
EducationBrown University (B.A., 1990)
OccupationInvestigative journalist
Notable credit(s)1996 Pulitzer Prize winner
2010 Michael Kelly Award winner
SpouseKristen Mulvihill

David Stephenson Rohde (born August 7, 1967) is an American author and investigative journalist, he is the former online news director for The New Yorker and now serves as Senior Executive Editor, National Security, for NBC News. 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 2002 until 2005, he was co-chief of The New York Times' South Asia bureau, based in New Delhi, India. He later contributed to the newspaper's team coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan that received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and was a finalist in his own right in the category in 2010. He is also a global affairs analyst for CNN.

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 Misplaced Pages, to remove news of the kidnapping from the public eye. This was done to decrease his value as a hostage and bargaining chip, and so increase his chances of eventual survival.

Background

Rohde is a native of Maine. He is a graduate of Fryeburg Academy, a boarding school located in Fryeburg, Maine. He attended Bates College before transferring to Brown University, where he received a B.A. in history in 1990. He is married to Kristen Mulvihill, a picture editor for Cosmopolitan magazine.

Reporting

Rohde worked as a production secretary for the ABC News 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 European 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 the Times's South Asia bureau from 2002 to 2005. From 2005 to 2011, he was a member of the Times's investigations department in New York City. Before joining The New Yorker in May 2017, he worked for Reuters in a variety of capacities, including foreign affairs columnist (2011-2013), investigative reporter (2014-2015) and national security investigations editor (2015-2017).

He was 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."

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 Zepa 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, Samantha Power, 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."

Detainees

While at The New York Times, Rohde has written about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 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:

Because of pervasive secrecy, little was known about how the detainees were treated until The New York Times published a story by David Rohde on January 20, 2003. It was datelined Karachi, Pakistan. Rohde had interviewed six Pakistani men deported from the United States after being detained in John Ashcroft's sweep.

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

Main article: Kidnapping of David Rohde

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 blackout of Rohde's kidnapping has caused a wider debate about the responsibility to report news in a timely manner. Misplaced Pages co-founder Jimmy Wales complied with a request from the Times to maintain the blackout, which he did through several administrators.

Recognition

In January 2012, Rohde was named one of the International Press Institute's World Press Freedom Heroes.

See also

Bibliography

  • Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II (1997; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; ISBN 0-374-25342-0 / 1998; Westview Press; ISBN 0-8133-3533-7)
  • A Safe Area: Srebrenica – Europe's Worst Massacre Since the Holocaust, 1997.
  • David Rohde and Kristen Mulvihill, A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping from Two Sides, 2010.
  • In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America's "Deep State" (2020. W. W. Norton & Company)
  • Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War Against Democracy , (2024. W. W. Norton & Company)

References

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