What price truth?
by Stephanie Piper
Like most people, I wanted Daniel Pearl to live. Like a lot of people, I believed he would. He would turn up battered and gaunt in some Karachi alleyway, I thought, or on a dirt road somewhere, and then he would shower and shave and appear on Larry King Live.
The news last week that he had been murdered by his captors felt like an almost personal betrayal. That September 11th hollow-stomach feeling flooded back again, the sense that the world has become a place where the worst you can imagine doesn't even come close. It wasn't supposed to work this way. Daniel Pearl was supposed to get the story and come back and write it, the way war correspondents do. He was young and smart and determined to go to the source, to uncover the facts. He was not, by all accounts, a show off or a daredevil. I doubt that he was thinking about a Pulitzer Prize as he made his way to the last fatal interview. My guess is that he was repeating the reporter's mantra, alternate verses of this-isn't-worth-it and this-is-the-best-job-in-the-world.
I spent most of my career as a newspaper reporter, working beats Daniel Pearl would have recognized from his occasional stints as a feature writer. I wrote about pets with jobs and holiday depression and prom dresses and teenage alcoholics. I was never in a war zone, but I dodged my share of verbal bullets from outraged readers who didn't like my take on children's beauty pageants or the local singles scene. Once in a while I covered breaking news and learned the time-honored journalistic technique of hurry up and wait.
In a business defined by deadlines, news involves a surprising amount of waiting. There is a lot of sitting around waiting for call-backs from people who might or might not have information you need. There is a lot of time spent following leads that lead exactly nowhere. And then there is the day when the phone rings, and the adrenaline starts pumping, and you grab your notebook and head out.
Historians talk about "the unforgiving moment," the split second when the course of human endeavor seems to depend on a single, decisive act. It is the moment good reporters live for, the reason they choose the job in the first place. It's the moment when the story seems within your grasp, the truth right there, waiting to be told.
It is a profoundly lonely moment. No one can make you go. If you say yes, the jigsaw puzzle of scrawled notes and tapes might suddenly come together in one defining interview. If you say yes, you have a chance to tell the story right.
When Daniel Pearl said yes on January 23, it was to fit another piece into the dark puzzle of terrorism we all face now. I wanted him to live and tell the story right. Instead, he did his job and became the story: brutal, unforgiving and brave.
February 28, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 9
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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