Until Danny Pearl was seized, no one thought of pulling reporters out of Pakistan, either. Pearl himself had only recently arrived there; his original post was in India, where he had been getting his feet wet covering South Asia for less than a year. But after September 11, internal competition within the paper drew Pearl to Pakistan.
Peter Waldman, a veteran Journal foreign correspondent, understands why. Unlike most major news organizations, Waldman notes, the Wall Street Journal tends to ignore its reporters’ geographic assignments — if a hot story breaks out, many Journal correspondents may converge on one place. "Suddenly, 12 people were covering his area," Waldman says.
Pearl felt he had to compete with his colleagues to maintain his standing at the Journal. Ironically, he had refused to venture into Afghanistan, choosing instead what seemed like the safer task of trolling Pakistan for stories. Concerned about his safety, Pearl actually met with officials at the US embassy, but received no special assistance from the Journal, where editors had not yet wondered about the possibility of blowback from the laptop affair. Not even when the New York Times reported a statement from the Journal’s foreign editor, John Bussey, outlining the paper’s new "policy" of sharing information with the Department of Defense, did the paper’s editors worry that its foreign reporters might face greater risks.
Why were Journal editors so reticent to talk about how Pearl got entangled in his deadly encounter? One reason is that the paper’s "standard support" for foreign correspondents might strike non-journalists as strange. Reporters do whatever they deem necessary. Full stop. There are no rules covering physical risks. Waldman recalled that he often met Islamic fundamentalists without receiving back-up and without any editors knowing where he was or why. Of the six years he lived abroad, Waldman said, "I never phoned in once" to alert editors that he might face danger.
As has been reported elsewhere, Pearl campaigned for many months to convince foreign editor Bussey that the Journal needed safety regulations to help protect its foreign reporters. The Journal has said it had safety measures in place, but in my own years as a foreign correspondent I never saw them. I dare say Pearl never did either. Proof? At the risk of sounding impertinent, one might ask how else Pearl could have managed to bring his pregnant wife to Karachi, the hostage-taking capital of South Asia? Was she allowed under the Journal’s "security rules?" A charitable explanation might be that there were no rules.
The Journal’s unease over disclosing what it has done to secure its foreign correspondents, thus, may stem from the sorry truth: the paper did little or nothing. Indeed, last week Waldman read excerpts from a fresh memo in which Bussey said foreign correspondents could enhance their safety by using regular drivers. Sure.
Of course, reporters in hostile countries must take risks, and no amount of preparation or caution can reduce those risks to zero. But the Journal has an obligation to help its reporters manage those risks. Not because the Journal is an institution that serves the public good. Or even because the Journal is an excellent employer, which it is. But because the murder of a reporter could cause a war — or justify one.
As Pearl’s death has shown, the fate of foreign correspondents is also the US government’s concern. While President Bush disregards the needs of living journalists — to cover the war close up, to find out about Dick Cheney’s activities, to learn how decisions about expanding the war are made — he is far more solicitous of dead journalists. On confirmation of Pearl’s death, Bush declared, "God bless Danny Pearl." He ordered a change in government policy on kidnapped Americans, essentially saying that in future the government would feel compelled to rescue abducted journalists. He offered a huge reward for information leading to the capture of Pearl’s killers and called for their extradition to the United States, even though there is no legal basis for Pearl’s killers to be tried and sentenced by US courts.
The editors of the Wall Street Journal never asked Bush to do all this on their behalf, I am sure. The newspaper, which has the largest circulation of any in the US, must cover the Bush administration objectively; to ask Bush for the favorable treatment outlined above would create a perception that the paper owes the Bush administration something, when it does not.
So let’s assume there is no deal. Let’s assume that Bush has hijacked the death of Danny Pearl for his own purposes. Still, the editors of the Wall Street Journal may get something as a result of the president’s intervention. Because in the streets of Islamic countries, Bush’s insistence on settling the score on behalf of Danny Pearl — rather than letting Pakistani courts do what they are capable of doing — will be perceived as preferential treatment for American journalists. And that adds to the risks incurred by all foreign correspondents.
The president may have blundered into this morass — or he may be smarter than he seems. Perhaps he does like his reporters better dead than alive.
G. Pascal Zachary is the author of The Global Me (Public Affairs, 2000), on globalization and multiculturalism. He was on the staff of the Wall Street Journal for 12 years. This story was provided by the AlterNet news service.
