Carroll's kindly kidnappers

Providence Journal: Obviously, everyone is happy that the American journalist Jill Carroll has been released from her murderous kidnappers in Iraq.
But Carroll's experience also raises some questions. One is whether freelance journalists, such as the plucky Carroll, who go into war zones are more likely to help or hurt public understanding of the situation. In a chaotic place such as Iraq, we fear that these ambitious reporters and commentators -- often inexperienced, and often wandering around in perilous places -- can be manipulated for propaganda, especially by the groups to which they seek access.
Carroll, for her part, was eager to be seen as sympathetic to the Iraqis, including the insurgents. She wore conservative Islamic clothing, and -- very commendably -- had learned Arabic. After her mysterious release, she was almost supine in her seeming desire to say how nice her captors had been, along with the accommodations, food, etc. "They never said they would hurt me, never threatened me in any way."
Eh? She was kidnapped on Jan. 7 in a bloody ambush that killed her translator. In a videotape released on Feb. 9, she said of her captors' demands: "There is a very short time. Please do it fast." (Or they might kill her?)
It almost sounds as if Carroll had "Stockholm syndrome" -- in which a kidnap victim comes to identify with the captors. (In fact, could she have identified with her captors before her capture?)
Then there is the problem that when something happens to a journalist, freelance or otherwise, the rest of the news media switch much of their attention from what are much more important issues to the human-interest story of one of their own. This is natural, but the public's understanding of the broader situation -- in this case, the war and the future of Iraq -- gets shorted. When it comes to journalists in peril, news judgment can quickly disappear.