From The Los Angeles Daily News

May 2, 2003

Journalists killed on the job are remembered

By Connie Cass
Associated Press Writer

ARLINGTON, Va. -- Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, kidnapped by Islamic militants in Pakistan, became the face of journalists who lost their lives covering the news last year. At least 30 others died worldwide.

New York freelancer Robert I. Friedman contracted a rare disease while reporting on the spread of AIDS in India. Journalism student Jimmy Higenyi was hit when police fired into the crowd at a rally in Uganda, which he was covering as a school assignment.

In Russia, Colombia, India, Brazil and elsewhere, news people were gunned down after exposing crime and corruption.

"When an unarmed journalist is killed, we are reminded of both the freedoms that we treasure in our society and how vulnerable we are to forces that threaten those freedoms," Pearl's father, Judea Pearl, said during a ceremony Friday to remember those lost in 2002.

Their names were added to the Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial, a spiraling tower of glass that reflects the sunlight in rainbow colors.

With the view across the Potomac River to Washington as a backdrop, family members and journalists read aloud each of the 1,475 names, dating from 1812 through last year.

They noted that this year's toll will probably finish higher.

"During the war in Iraq, 12 journalists lost their lives in just three weeks," said Joe Urschel, executive director of the Newseum. The museum and memorial are financed by the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to a free press.

Names of the war dead, including NBC News reporter David Bloom, Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large Michael Kelly and Associated Press Television News cameraman Nazeh Darwazeh, will be added in 2004.

Seventeen of the reporters, photographers, broadcasters and other journalists killed last year are believed to have been targeted because of their work, Urschel said.

Pearl said his son was killed "not for what he wrote or planned to write, but for what he represented.

"To his killers, he represented the ideas that every person in every civilized society aspires to uphold -- modernity, openness, pluralism, freedom of inquiry, truth and respect for all people," he said.

Pearl also said some European and Arab media must share blame for his son's death, because of "dehumanizing rhetoric" that foments violent hatred of Americans, Israelis and Jews.

Likewise, he called on American journalists to portray Iraqis and all people "with dignity and respect."

"In a world infected with fanatics who run around with lit matches, journalists cannot simply pour gasoline into the street and pretend they bear no responsibility for the fires," Pearl said.

The highest number of deaths -- seven -- was recorded in Russia, including three journalists apparently attacked because of their reporting on crime and corruption. Three journalists were shot in Colombia, and two died covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Several international journalism organizations count deaths in different ways. Unlike the Freedom Forum, some include translators and drivers. Some exclude deaths from accidents or illness. The Committee to Protect Journalists counted 20 news people killed as a direct result of their work in 2002.

Besides Pearl, other Americans were:

	Larry Greene, 50, a photographer with KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, killed in a Navy helicopter crash in the North Arabian Gulf.
	Philippe Wamba, 31, of Boston, the first Internet journalist on the memorial. Editor in chief of Africana.com, he died in a car accident while doing research in Kenya.
	Photographer David Gerdrum, 48, and reporter Jennifer Hawkins Hinderliter, 22, killed in a traffic accident on their way back from covering disabled skiers for KRTV in Great Falls, Mont.

Hinderliter died just over three months into her first reporting job, said her father Michael Hinderliter of Indianapolis. "She had high hopes, and she was striving for them."

Friedman, 51, suffered for seven years from the illness he caught while researching how organized crime, prostitution and government corruption contributed to the spread of AIDS in India.

"He never regretted it," said Friedman's widow, Christine Dugas, a journalist for USA Today. "If you did what was important you were always going to be attacked and take risks."