NEWS TOO DANGEROUS TO GATHER
The San Francisco Chronicle has a story about reporters reconsidering their job risks in Pakistan. It quotes a UPI freelancer who says he has already canceled two trips in light of Daniel Pearl's murder. And you know, I hate to say it, but the reporters are right to back off but it also means the terrorists were successful.

For me, I considered the situation hopeless when the kidnappers sent the e-mail offering to send some food to Pearl's family. At that point, I realized they meant to kill him, and more like him, and were laughing about it. How better to scare away journalists than prove that you will pick them off one my one to kill and mutilate them? At the foreign correspondents panel last week, there was talk about kidnapping being more scary than the front lines of a war zone. It means you can't take anything for granted at anytime.

I've been in very few war zones, but I can tell you that over the years I've done hundreds of things as a reporter - thinking I had some sort of magic reporter safety bubble around me - that I never would have done otherwise. I walked alone into how many houses with suspicious men? I've gotten into cars with strangers, walked into freshly cleared bomb threat zones, written things that put people in jail or cost them their jobs. Someone stalked me at one of my newspaper jobs, going so far as to slice up pictures and other items on my desk one night. I got my first death threat while editor of my college paper. While I weighed each of those risks in the process, you are never 100 percent sure of what you're getting into.

What Daniel Pearl's kidnappers have done is let all the foreign reporters know that their odds have just gotten a lot worse. So as a result, readers in the free world will know a lot less about what's going on over there. And that's the way the kidnappers want it. Remember Pearl was following a lead that might have tied al Qaeda to the shoe bomber, Richard Reid. The WSJ, mind you, was the paper that bought the looted computer that holds strong evidence linking Reid to al Qaeda. Having reporters roam freely around Pakistan and Afghanistan is bad news to the bad guys. If these guys think Sept. 11 was fun, there should be no question that they'll take pleasure in chasing the journalists out of their home in as brutal a way as possible. And it's great propaganda for their side, as well. USA Today has a story about Pakistani officials worried that the video will go on sale in stores there. And sadly, we'll see it on the Internet, I'm afraid.

I don't have any solutions in mind. I don't think there are any. It's not as though this is the only place on earth where the people and/or its rulers want the reporters dead. Thailand just ejected a couple foreign reporters who were a "threat to national security," and a prominent reporter was forced to flee Zimbabwe after repeated threats on his life during the past months. He said he will return to report when it is safe.

And you know, that's about all you can do. Go back when it's safe. Let the guys with guns take care of things. Reporters like to think they're super-human and that they're safe despite having no gun and more skepticism than trust. They tend to be smart and lucky, but that goes only so far. And with nine reporters already dead in Afghanistan and Pakistan during this conflict, the odds aren't worth it. But to those reporters who do stay and continue to walk into suspicious situations for the sake of the news, they have my deepest gratitude and I wish them all the luck in the world. It is a noble job.
- posted by Amy @ 2/25/2002 06:41:00 PM