The absence of evidence is not necessarily …
Yemen has upped the reward and expanded the search to two other governorates, but there is still no word on the remaining six hostages. This absence of information is leading to all sorts of rumors and theories (some viable others decidedly less so), many of which are filling my in-box at a rather rapid clip. Thanks to the many who refused to speculate in “Novakian paranoia.”
Unfortunately, deadlines don’t necessarily wait for events, which means that journalists – in the absence of evidence – looking to fill space are increasingly turning to some of these theories as a way to write about what is happening. This is dangerous, but my continued pleas seem to be falling on deaf ears. (Not that such concerns keep me from commenting publicly that we don’t know enough yet.)
Indeed, after a long but very enjoyable night of Shostakovich I awoke much too early in the morning to go on the Takeaway to talk about Yemen. The program is live, which is always a bit of a high-wire act with me. But I’ll still post the audio when it becomes available.
Finally, for those looking for a bit of humor out of Yemen, I offer up this piece. Thankfully, Ali Nasir denied that it was his account before CNN could start using it as a news source (and before I could friend him). (For those of you wondering how al-Tagheer got the translation of Facebook wrong when going from English to English, well, what can I say, sometimes these things happen)
