Kurtz Joins Those Raising Questions About Carroll's Interviews

Editor And Publisher | April 1 2006

After spending 82 days in confinement, apparently without a single step outside, and with her life on the line every moment, reporter Jill Carroll was cut surprisingly little slack from certain quarters in the day following her sudden release by insurgents in Iraq.

At issue were a pair of video interviews, one shot by the militants just before her release, the other at an Iraqi political office just after she was set free but before she was back in American hands. In the latter, she simply stated that she had been treated well, all things considered, and had never been beaten. In the first, while still under control of her captors, she went further, praising the insurgency and asking President Bush to stop the war.

Not unexpectedly, posters at many conservative-leaning Web sites have lit into her for these statements, even though the interviews were clearly given under duress--or, in the case of the first tape, quite possibly coerced. Few, if any, of the posters have likely spent even one day in captivity, let alone 82 in what has been called "the most dangerous city in the world."

Leading newspapers, on the other hand, reported Carroll's statements, but then gathered comments by experts, who pointed out that she had spent nearly three months in a kind of jail, was hardly able to speak clearly or freely, and might possibly be suffering from the "Stockholm Syndrome" in which some hostages come to feel sympathy for the captors they have become so dependent on for survival.

Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz, surprisingly, weighed in Friday in a Web column raising serious questions about Carroll's interviews, even while admitting she might have been "shell shocked" when she gave them. His admission, "perhaps this is unfair," did not seem to deter him.

"This is a courageous young woman," Kurtz wrote.

"I must say, though, that I found her first interview yesterday rather odd. Carroll seemed bent on giving her captors a positive review, going on about how well they treated her, how they gave her food and let her go to the bathroom. And they never threatened to hit her. Of course, as we all saw in those chilling videos, they did threaten to kill her. And they shot her Iraqi translator to death.

"Why make a terrorist group who put her family and friends through a terrible three-month ordeal sound like they were running a low-budget motel chain?

"Now perhaps this is unfair, for there is much we do not know. We don't know why Carroll was kidnapped and why she was abruptly released. She says she doesn't either, but surely she must have gotten some clues about her abductors' outlook and tactics during her 82-day captivity. Maybe she was just shell-shocked right after being let go. Maybe she won't feel comfortable speaking out until she's back on American soil.

"As my colleagues in Baghdad point out, when that interview was taped, Carroll was still in the custody of a Sunni political party with ties to the insurgency. It may have just made sense for her to be especially cautious. And they tell me that Carroll did cry -- off camera -- when the subject of her murdered translator came up. Still, people are buzzing because her taped remarks have been played over and over again on television. I hope she'll be able to share a fuller account of her ordeal soon."

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