He Took a Risk in Pursuit of the Truth

What was Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl doing when he was kidnapped and viciously murdered in Pakistan? Why would this husband and soon-to-be father put himself at such terrible risk?

These are questions that every journalist faces each time one of their number pays the ultimate price their calling can demand. Pearl was the third journalist to die this year, the tenth to be killed covering Sept. 11 and its consequences.

Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists chronicled more than 600 instances in which journalists faced lesser but still serious threats--beatings, imprisonment, harassment both physical and economic.

Why would anyone undertake this kind of work? Pearl’s cruel and pointless killing makes us all examine ourselves and our profession. His life provides some of the answers to these questions.

A very intelligent, able and charming man, Pearl had a reputation for being a careful journalist. He wasn’t interested in excitement for excitement’s sake and didn’t take unnecessary chances. He was dedicated, as is nearly every foreign correspondent I know, to finding and telling the truth.

In the course of that search, he decided it was important to find out more about how and why Islamic radical Richard Reid embarked on the course that led him to load his shoes with explosives and get on that Paris-Miami airplane flight. So he began seeking out Reid’s teacher and mentor, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani. Unfortunately, those he came in contact with were not interested in truth, only in terror.

But their evil does not detract from Pearl’s dedication or his courage or the courage of every correspondent who believes truth is worth taking risks. They don’t know if anyone will actually pay attention to the truths they find and tell.

They are sometimes discouraged and dismayed at the indifference of the world to the terrible things they witness. They find it hard to point to instances in which the mere telling or showing of evil acts brings about an end to them. But somehow they believe it will.

They believe it is better for you to know that such things happen than not to know. They believe it is better for you to see the faces of the victims, almost always innocent children and women, and to hear their voices than to let them die ignored and unrecognized. They believe that if they can just make you pay attention, your horror and anger and outrage will match theirs, and you will demand that such things stop. And sometimes, they are right.

Sometimes, often enough, wrongs are righted, wars are stopped, oppressive governments are toppled because the world did pay attention. Often enough that despite the cruel and evil death experienced by Pearl, despite the deaths of other journalists, and the beatings and the jailings, his colleagues will continue to take risks to find and tell you the truth, or as much of it as they can manage.

Danny’s murder was pointless. His life was not.

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Terry Anderson is honorary co-chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists. As an Associated Press reporter, he was kidnapped in Lebanon in 1985 and held hostage for seven years.