Posted on: Friday, February 22, 2002

Reporter's execution accomplished nothing

With heavy hearts, we grieve the senseless death of Daniel Pearl, a 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter who was killed by Islamic militants in Pakistan for a cause that appears confused at best.

Ironically, Pearl was not a cavalier journalist who sought the adrenaline rush of the war zone. On the contrary, he chose not to venture to Afghanistan because his wife was pregnant.

He was abducted in Karachi while attempting to interview a radical Muslim who is said to have ties to al-Qaida terrorists.

His abductors accused him of being a spy for the CIA, then Israel's Mossad. One of the suspects said the group's leader, Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, wanted to kidnap "a person who is a Jew and anti-Islam."

Later in court, Sheikh admitted to engineering Pearl's abduction to protest Pakistan's alliance with the United States' post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism.

Whatever their cause, it is unlikely to be advanced by the death of Pearl. In fact, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf says such acts of terror would not deter his government and the people of Pakistan from combating terrorism alongside the international community.

Nor will it, or should it, deter the news media from covering this ongoing conflict and — this is important — the passions and politics behind the conflict. Because the job of journalism is not simply to report the fighting, but to seek understanding of what drives people to this terrible edge. This is precisely what Pearl was about.

Daniel Pearl is the 10th journalist killed in the war against the terrorism. And while it's clear that foreign correspondents who cover conflicts risk their lives, that doesn't make their deaths any less tragic.

In some ways, it is more poignant because they died in the line of duty to seek the truth.