Journalists killed while on the job last year are being memorialized

CONNIE CASS, <a href=www.sfgate.com>Associated Press Writer Friday, May 2, 2003
(05-02) 10:50 PDT ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) --

The names of 31 journalists who died covering the news around the world last year were added to a rainbow-hued glass memorial Friday.

The father of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan, said the lost reporters represent "the ultimate strength of open society as well as its ultimate vulnerability."

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

"To his killers," Pearl said, "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."

Joe Urschel, executive director of the Newseum, said 17 of the 31 journalists were targeted because of their profession.

"In many cases, they knew that their efforts to get close to the story placed them in danger," Urschel said during an annual ceremony to rededicate the memorial, which has a sweeping view of Washington across the Potomac River.

Last year's deaths brings to 1,475 the toll of reporters, photographers, broadcasters and other journalists who died as a result of injury or illness while covering the news, from 1812 to 2002. As the sun painted a rainbow of colors across the spiraling glass memorial Friday morning, journalists and family members read each name aloud.

Already, names are mounting for next year's service.

At least a dozen journalists died while covering the war in Iraq, and two more are missing, said Susan Bennett, director of international exhibits for the Freedom Forum's Newseum. The foundation, dedicated to free speech and free press, maintains the journalists memorial, adding the previous year's names each May.

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 embedded between glass panes in 2004.

Journalists killed in 2002 included a newspaper editor and a broadcaster who were shot in separate incidents in Colombia; both had received death threats. In Russia, attacks on two editors and a reporter were linked to their investigative reporting. Journalists in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Nepal and the Philippines also appear to have been killed because of their work, the foundation said.

Two journalists died in gunfire while covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One was struck by a U.S. tank during military exercises in Kuwait. Others died in Papua New Guinea, Uganda and Venezuela.

Alongside Pearl, Americans on this year's list are:

• Larry Greene, 50, a photographer with KCBS-TV in Los Angeles, killed in a Navy helicopter crash in the North Arabian Gulf.

• Photographer David Gerdrum, 48, and reporter Jennifer Hawkins Hinderliter, 22, killed in a traffic accident on assignment for KRTV in Great Falls, Mont.

• Freelance reporter Robert I. Friedman, 51, who died of heart complications resulting from a rare disease contracted while reporting in Bombay, India.

• Philippe Wamba, 31, editor in chief of the Web site Africana.com, who died in a car accident while doing research in Kenya.

On the Net:

Freedom Forum: www.freedomforum.org