Who was Daniel Pearl?
Daniel Pearl was a Wall Street Journal reporter who became known the world over after his kidnapping and murder in 2002. Militant terrorists in Pakistan kidnapped Pearl as he investigated the War on Terrorism. Daniel Pearl would become part of the story he was investigating, an innocent death in a war most of the world does not want. Daniel Pearl was born on 10 October 1963 in Princeton, New Jersey. A talented writer from an early age, Pearl co-founded the Stanford Commentary while a student at Stanford University. After only a few weeks working at the San Francisco Business Times, he moved on to the Wall Street Journal in 1990. While working for the Journal, Pearl moved from Atlanta to Washington and then on to London as a Middle East correspondent. Pearl’s next role would be as South Asia Bureau Chief for the Journal, situated in Bombay. It was here that he began his investigations, reporting stories on the War on Terrorism. His reports included accounts of money laundering by the Al
Asra Nomani should have loved “A Mighty Heart,” the new feature film about journalist Daniel Pearl’s abduction and murder in Pakistan five years ago. Pearl’s onetime Wall Street Journal colleague was, after all, a consultant on the film and a central player in the story itself. It was her Karachi home that became the headquarters for the weeks-long search that forms the movie’s spine. But despite the fact that Nomani was given a say about a host of small details — right down to the kind of notebooks the film’s reporters used as props — the final product didn’t sit well with her. “I just don’t believe in the movie and the mythology of its marketing and PR campaign,” she wrote to one of the producers. (Her e-mail was later reprinted on the Web site Gawker.com.) “As much as the talking points say that this movie is for Danny and that everyone made the movie for the right reasons, I don’t at all feel that it is for Danny or that noble intentions underl[ie] this movie.” With A-list director
When I worked for the mainstream media, rumor had it that an editor of mine had once been a “CIA asset” in the Middle East. Though that was never substantiated, he held a series of plum positions at this major metropolitan newspaper, finally running the Review and Opinion section which became infused with his rightward leanings. Things are seldom what they seem. Skim milk masquerades as cream, two cheerfully disenchanted characters sing in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta “H.M.S. Pinafore.” The day the news confirmed kidnapped reporter Daniel Pearl’s awful murder in Pakistan, I thought of my former boss, and how impossible it is to know who anyone really is. For journalists, the holy grail of the profession is serving as a foreign correspondent, covering a war. Beyond the obviously romantic appeal, it’s a noble tradition – not just for the glorious opportunity of gutsy reporting and great, heart-stopping writing, but more important, you’re an intrepid eyewitness to history, questing to
