Ingwerson also learned firsthand on Saturday just how non-governmental organizations could help him with his campaign to free Carroll. That day, he got two calls from the Committee to Protect Journalists. A nonprofit organization founded in 1981, CPJ documented and exposed attacks on the press around the world. When a news organization faced a crisis such as illegal incarceration, slaying or kidnapping of a reporter, CPJ intervened. Typically, its director or another staff member contacted the news organization with an offer of resources. For example, CPJ could send a delegation to meet with government officials or organize a public protest. Since the Iraq War’s beginning, CPJ had kept close tabs on the safety of Iraqi and foreign journalists.

Listen to Campagna discuss the advice he gave Ingwerson. Length: 1 min 48 sec

Then-CPJ Director Cooper, a former National Public Radio foreign correspondent, gave Ingwerson an overview of how CPJ could help, based on their experiences with other journalist abductions. She suggested, for example, that Carroll’s family should be his “key artillery” for publicity. Use them wisely to garner attention and only for a specific purpose, she urged him. CPJ Middle East Program Director Campagna also phoned Ingwerson with an additional piece of advice: Direct your publicity efforts to Arab-language media, which the kidnappers or those who could influence them would see. Appearances by Carroll’s family on US television would be of no help. Ingwerson agreed. As he comments, “The kidnappers are not watching Oprah.”

The previous decade had seen a steep rise in journalist kidnappings, and CPJ had learned some lessons from the experiences of freed reporters. After their release, reporters had described their captors as technologically savvy, with access to the Internet and satellite television. Kidnappers Googled™ newly captured journalists to gauge their potential value as bargaining chips. It was important, Campagna told Ingwerson, to emphasize Carroll’s journalistic “bona fides... Push it to a more positive depiction of this professional reporter.” At the same time, the Monitor should be careful not to make her seem too important—that could tempt her kidnappers to raise the stakes for her release.

Courtesy Committee to Protect Journalists

Campagna also described some strategies that had seemed to work in recent kidnapping cases. In one instance, because a British reporter’s kidnappers were known to be Shiite militia, his news organization had appealed to Shiite clergymen to help free him. To encourage the clergy to say yes, the reporter’s mother appeared on Arab television and thanked them by name in advance. The result: They did cooperate. “That was like a textbook wonderful situation of where you can pull those levers,” says Ingwerson. He hoped that if and when the Monitor found out who had seized Carroll, Team Jill could also contact an appropriate influential person or group to exert pressure on her captors.

Listen to Campagna describe what CPJ does. Length: 1 min 41 sec

The two CPJ representatives, says Ingwerson, helped him to think in strategic terms about the campaign to free Carroll. “Their advice was much more sophisticated than simply tamp down the publicity or amp up the publicity,” Ingwerson says. “They thought tactically and strategically about it.” Their advice would help steer Ingwerson through the coming weeks.