Kidnapped WSJ Reporter: Your thoughts?

How do you figure, home boy?

[jaguar]

This whole thing is just..
THe further you go, the worse it gts, the more attacks, the more deaths, yes, there is no alternative (now, anyway) but..
depressing

[Griff]

It looks like the worst is true, sad.

I wonder what the impact will be. Some journalists were starting to question the escalation of this conflict. Will Daniel Pearls gruesome murder, by design or chance, quiet dissent playing into the hands of the war mongers, East and West?

[Griff]

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburnpearl.html

[Undertoad]

Sometimes Cockburn is just too vile and this is one of those times. He puts the blame on Pearl's death on everyone except his killers.

Agreed.

Plus, it's damn easy to sit back and say "well how STUPID, putting him in SOUTHEAST ASIA." Hindsight's 20/20. Doesn't change the fact that a reporter got kidnapped and murdered.

What a tool.

[Griff]

That he does... but he also defends the quality of Pearls reporting, while nailing his editors. What of his main point though? Reporters are no longer viewed on the ground as observers, but rather as advocates or tools of one side. From my recollection of the Gulf War coverage, he may have a point. The major media outlets toed the company line pretty well. Of course, if the terrorists main objective is all out war rather than some reasonable settlement of grievances, then it could be that the nature of the conflict has changed the reporter from useful protected observer to target. Will Moslem extremists who want to sweep Israel off the maps see an Israeli citizen as a disinterested observer? Obviously not. That does not change the nature of his murder. It was apparently meant to galvanize the West and probably has, hopefully it also alienated much of the East.

as always i may be wearing rectal earmuffs

[Undertoad]

Me too.

But the very idea that the murderers had the faintest clue that Geraldo arrived armed... or that the WSJ is conservative....

They speak english as a second language if at all. They're halfway around the world. They are kidnappers and brutal murderers and viciously anti-West. And Cockburn's concerned that maybe they've worked out a subtle shift in American journalism that the American public is apparently too dense to work out?

People really want world events to prove their personal theory of how things work. The more screwed-up their personal theories are, the more convoluted the proof will be.

"See, see, I was right all along!"

[warch]

But the very idea that the murderers had the faintest clue that Geraldo arrived armed...

Talk about your cosmic injustice...

But with seriousness...I think the strategic usefulness or threat of a captive, rescued, actively reporting foreign journalist (or aid worker) most often is very well considered, by all sides. They may still end up dead, but perhaps not a wasted weapon, in their persecutor's eyes. Hostage commodities and broadcast access.