CBS photojournalist Richard Butler, along with his interpreter, was kidnapped in Basra, Iraq, on Feb. 10. He was rescued by Iraqi military forces more than two months later.

As expected, there was significant coverage in the immediate aftermath of the abduction, and following Iraq’s announcement that he was released.

But the attention paid to Butler during his eight weeks in captivity was shamefully scant.

A Nexis search revealed that only one print story - an Atlanta Journal-Constitution column on March 24 - even made passing reference to the hostage. That column, a wide-ranging question-and-answer piece, gave a 46-word update on the Butler affair in response to a reader’s question.

Forty-six words. That is fewer than one word for each day of Butler’s captivity. It is less than the fine print in an average credit card advertisement.

Journalists are not generally a sensitive bunch, but they had, until recently, a soft spot for their colleagues.

There was constant coverage of the abduction of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was subsequently murdered in Pakistan in 2002, and the kidnapping of Jill Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor in 2006.

The international media paid rapt attention to the three-week detention of U.S. News & World Report journalist Nicholas Daniloff by the Soviet Union in 1986.

“The U.S. Embassy urged my wife to shut up and be silent, but she didn’t agree,” Daniloff said in a recent interview. “She gave wall-to-wall interviews 24 hours a day. That put Moscow and Washington under considerable public pressure to resolve this. Publicity helps, and silence does not.”

But the trend, illustrated in Butler’s case, indicates that silence is winning the day. That is immensely troubling, given the risks that journalists face today.

Barry Bearak, the co-bureau chief for the New York Times [NYT] in Johannesburg, was arrested in Zimbabwe while covering the presidential elections there in April, charged with “committing journalism.”

Despite the laughable-if-it-were-at-all-funny alleged crime, the vast majority of coverage Bearak received followed his release and deportation from Zimbabwe. And that only after he wrote a gripping first-person account of his ordeal that was distributed to outlets worldwide.

Fittingly, both Butler and Bearak won their safe releases in the weeks leading up to World Press Freedom Day, which is celebrated globally every May 3.

The day was at first designed to be a reminder of the importance of the freedom of the press.

But in recent years it has taken on a more literal meaning - a reminder to us that the people who bring us the news every day need protection from violence, incarceration or persecution.

Internews, the world’s leading media development non-governmental organization, sees these threats to journalists on a regular basis. It operates in nearly three dozen countries across the world, and its training seminars focus on protecting independent media and easy access to information.

But when the messengers are imperiled, the news is undeliverable.

That point is driven home clearly in the last line of Bearak’s story of his jailing:

“In the meantime, Zimbabwe is beset with paroxysms of violence. The presidential election results are still unannounced.”

Sadly, that may be the most striking lesson of this year’s World Press Freedom Day.

While captive, Richard Butler and Barry Bearak were not doing their very important jobs, and for that, all of us suffer.

And while Butler and Bearak were both captive and suffering, the rest of the world’s media did not do their very important jobs.

They failed to “commit journalism” on behalf of their peers.