According to Turkish news reports chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, Richard Engel has gone missing in Sryia.
Gawker reported that the Turkish news reports also say that Turkish journalist, Aziz Akyavas who was working with Engel, has also gone missing.
Gawker reported that NBC News had Engel's status in Syria under a news blackout, under which even Gawker had agreed to until now. NBC News has asked reporters inquiring about the report to participate in a news blackout. They also went to Twitter and asked those who mentioned the Turkish reports to take them down.
Hurriyet, a Turkish Newspaper said that Engel and Akyavas have not been in contact with NBC News since Thursday morning.
The Atlantic Wire reported that the report that NBC tried to keep under wraps surfaced on Monday. According to the Atlantic when translated from Turkish says, " AMERICAN NBC Television Turkey Representative of Saint Akyavaş and Middle East correspondent Richard Engel, missing in Syria since the morning of Thursday.Colleagues and relatives waiting for the good news coming from Syria."
Business Insider reported that investigative journalist Jeremy Schahill has argued that the news blackout should be respected but none the less the story has been shown by a number of outlets including The Daily Mail and The Houston Chronicle.
Gawker writer John Cook, posted the following rationale for deciding to publish information about Engel, "The rationale for the blackout was offered in off-the-record conversations, so I can't present their argument here. But I will say this: No one told me anything that indicated a specific, or even general, threat to Engel's safety. No one said, "If you report this, then we know, or suspect, that X, Y, or Z may happen." It was infinitely more vague and general than that.
As I wrote in the post, when the New York Times maintained a blackout about David Rohde, the rationale was clear: I was directly told that the Times had reason to believe that the people who had Rohde would harm him if news got out. There was nothing approaching that level of specificity or argumentation here. I would not have written a post if someone had told me that there was a reasonable or even remote suspicion that anything specific would happen if I wrote the post."
NBC has not said anything publicly about Engel being unaccounted for. Engel is a prominent international correspondent and last reported from Syria on Dec. 11.
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