Journalism, and and especially criticism of journalism, often acts as if reporters are stenographers, just people there to move a block of information from a room to a printed page. But we know that's not the case. Put four reporters in a press conference, and you get four different stories. Similar, sure, but different. Put four reporters in a conflict zone, and you'll get a bigger differential in "the" story. To expect anything different strikes me as naive.

You're right that the power equation is way out of whack when reporting in Africa, and you're right that that shouldn't paralyze reporters from doing their jobs. It's not the doing of the job that's the issue; it's how.

You're also right that reporters aren't social workers or protection advocates (in fact, I'm going to have a blog post up about this in just a day or two over at the Pulizter Center). But that doesn't mean they can't think sensitively about the impact of their editorial choices.

Here's another thing Joan Didion does well: She chooses telling details. How many times have we as cub reporters seen phrases like "while sipping an iced tea" slashed from our copy? We think it's color, but our editors teach us that it's just extraneous detail. Details should add something, reveal something, give context or nuance.

What detail does the quote in question add? I know that the woman was raped by a man sticking his hand inside her. Does that add anything? Does that reveal any nuance, or make me understand the crime any better? I don't think so. On the other hand, I think the cost is high -- to the source, and to the reader (I've heard from quite a few people who didn't finish the article).

I'm not saying everyone who thinks about these things will make the same choice as me. But I am saying it's a choice, and we should acknowledge and take responsibility for it.

What right does a reporter have to omit that quote? Or any others?

You seem to be confusing the role of a reporter. A reporter isn't there to protect one party or another, no matter how horrific the circumstance. A reporter is there to document and tell a story. And in that process people will get hurt.

Which addresses your second question, are reporters complicit? Um, yes. Particularly, in Africa, where the power equation between reporter and source is often frightfully out of balance. Should this paralyze reporters from doing their jobs? I don't think so.

But, I think any reporter covering violence--particularly sexual violence--needs to balance their obligation not to self-censor with whether they can live with the repercussions of reporting the story.

When a reporter begins engaging in other things, particularly divining what is best for their sources, they become something different, but certainly not a reporter.

I think Joan Didion put it well: "Writers are always selling somebody out."

I don't think many consumers of news media (whether print or otherwise) consider the details of the journalistic process on how and why things are written as they are, as well as how it influences us as readers. It is interesting to read your comments, and to think about the challenges involved in appropriately covering these type of topics.

On the other hand, there are important questions about what and how much to tell the reader, and in what sequence, in order to do all the things a story should do: be informative; give context; be sensitive to the people who appear in it, etc. This story doesn't work for me at the reader's level.

That said, I also think that there are way worse examples of NYT reporters representing Africa poorly - Adam Nossiter has been doing a great job (in my non-expert opinion) covering recent events in Guinea, and all his articles on the topic have been well written.

I really appreciate that you picked up on these subtleties and wrote this insightful post, even though other examples could be more compelling.