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."
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