It's safe to assume that if McClelland was riding in the car with the victim whose tongue was bitten off there was not enough time to give consent. If I were currently working in Haiti, I would report her for journalistic misconduct immediately. Unfortunately new types of media such as Twitter make it difficult to maintain the safety and security of rape survivors, whose stories should be private and only shared with the consent of the victim.

A quick visit to the UNFPA or UNICEF website will provide information on the three most important aspects of assisting rape victims - consent, confidentiality and providing as much safety for the victim and the service provider (nurse/doctor, counselor, etc.) as possible. (So including the rape victim's name is a flagrant abuse. I sincerely hope it was fake.)

I am not a fan of Twitter and this "rape tweet" does nothing to assuage my fear of misusing information. I understand that this is my personal opinion, however, so I won't take this point any further!

Many thanks to Jina for highlighting this important debate.

But I think this topic has probably worn out its welcome in my followers' inboxes. So I'm going to close the comments section. If anyone would like to issue a raucous protest, leave a comment and I'll consider your protest. If I don't publish it, I'll at least respond to you privately.

Thanks to all for the fascinating discussion.

From : http://www.jinamoore.com/...ictims-nick-kristof-replies/

"I've fired scathing blog posts right off before, about this very issue and aimed directly at other pieces of journalism; I regret that. I think I would have learned more -- and maybe you readers would too -- if I had been more measured and talked first to the journalist whose work I critiqued.

So I started where a journalist should: investigating my assumptions."s

Yes, I do believe you should have "started where a journalist should".
That would have been most helpful, don't you think?

I'm amazed that Jina can get such good internet access in rural Rwanda!

To reply to Janie, being disturbed doesn't necessary mean I have the desire to contact the author to ask her about it. And futhermore, it is not an obligation of mine to contact her for clarification. The obligation lies with the journalist, McClelland, to clarify context. In other words, the problem similar to what Jina mentions is that context for the event IS NOT provided, or if so provided, done so very POORLY. Without the journalist providing the context, she comes across as being insensitive to Kerby (the rape victmi), and also comes across as being egoistical (more interesting in "LOOK AT ME TWITTING!" than the actual story of the victim).

It's the journalist's duty to properly set that context when it is not easily discernible. When a journalist publishes in a newspaper, associated with the format of the newspaper is a whole line of things including authority, fact, and sensitivity to the people discussed in the story. Twitter does not automatically provide for that kind of context and therefore McClelland needs to be aware of setting the context straight.

There are other kinds of contexts that are part of writing that do not have to do with the format of the publication (whether Twitter or traditional broadsheet). I won't discuss those because Jina has done that very well in several comments above mine.

Good luck working in Rwanda, Jina! What a privilege to have a job that enables you, it seems to go from place to place in Africa.

Alas, nope, not Thib. Wish I was a trained anthropologist and a working journalist (and also, while we're at it, a better violinst) but a girl's only got so many hours in a day...