I heard a couple of people talking on the radio the other day about this. They also said that a huge number of journalists die or get killed around the world each year whilst on assignment - 150 I think they said. This seems to be an extraordinary claim?
I didn't hear this story, stales, but I know it's true. Photojournalism is a subject close to my heart and I have followed it closely ever since I started to hear about such legends as Robert Capa and Don McCullin. Capa was killed in the early days of the Indo-China war whilst McCullin covered Vietnam, the Lebanese civil war and many other conflicts around the world.
Nobody knows why journalists are lured to the dangerous spots and conflicts but some say that it is their need to cover the truth of a subject and record it for the world to see that drives them. Unlike a CNN reporter standing at the rear or in a Holiday Inn the true reporter puts on a flak jacket and goes out with the forces to oversee behaviour on both sides. The best journalists record atrocities on both sides, as I believe there were plenty in the recent Afghan debacle.
Many young journalists are killed during quiet moments and lulls in the fighting when their guard is down and they are least expecting trouble - not in the heat of battle. Four Swedish journalists were killed by bandits whilst sleeping in a small village held by 'friendly' forces in Afghansiatan. 150 journalists killed last year seems quite a conservative figure, byt the way. During one year of the Bosnian conflict alone more than 50 journalists were killed - several by sniper fire just after arriving at Sarajevo airport - and conflicts elsewhere would easily bring this figure up to the hundreds.
I don't mind confessing that, despite the dangers involved, I almost gave up my job to take a freelance assignment to Afghanistan last year. The conflict didn't last long enough for me to finish my organisation, however. Had I been wounded or killed during that conflict I would hate to have been referred to as a hero. What I would have seen and recorded would be my testament to frivolity and horror of war and that is more important to me than fame and recognition. And, so I believe, to all journalists.
Daniel Pearl was unlucky. He knew the risk he was taking and he paid dearly for it. But his being used as a political pass-the-parcel and being referred to as a hero is unwarrented. The fact he was American was coincidental to the task he was performing. He was a journalist - not a freedom fighter and, to label him a hero implies the latter which is just sickening.
The political implications of such labelling is to give carte blanche to the Draconian anti-terrorist policies of a fundamentally arrogant US government by justifying pressure on the Pakistani government and even, in the not-too-distant future, allowing a military occupation of that country.
