What U.S. newspapers are saying

New York Times

After nearly a month of churning rumors and contradictory reports, American and Pakistani officials announced yesterday that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped last month in Karachi, had been murdered by his captors. His killing is a senseless act, shattering for his family and ultimately self-defeating for those responsible. Mr. Pearl's reportorial enterprise and personal courage were admired by his colleagues and competitors alike. The world of journalism mourns his death, though it can only begin to fathom the grief of his family, particularly his wife, Mariane, now nearly seven months pregnant with their first child. ...

The terrible irony of Mr. Pearl's murder is that he and other independent journalists have been trying to present a detailed and informed portrait of the mindset, motives and grievances of the Islamic fundamentalists in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the war in Afghanistan. That work will continue despite the killing, but the kidnappers have only undermined their cause by their acts.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani leader, must now see to it that all Mr. Pearl's murderers are rounded up and brought to justice. In recent weeks, General Musharraf has been trying on several fronts to crack down on Islamic radicals in Pakistan, including purging his intelligence service of officials who maintained a relationship with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The killing of Danny Pearl reinforces the urgency of General Musharraf's effort to turn Pakistan away from radical Islamic fundamentalism.

Washington Post

As the latest escalation of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed unfolds in a grisly succession of ambushes, bombings, raids and airstrikes, with some 50 killed between Monday and last night, one conclusion, at least, is pretty clear: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's strategy for ending the violence has failed. The hawkish prime minister promised when he took office a year ago that his aggressive military action in the West Bank and Gaza and his offer of an interim political settlement to the Palestinians would curtail the threat to Israeli lives. Instead, it has grown far worse.

With increasing support from the Bush administration, Mr. Sharon blames the deterioration entirely on Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority; and Mr. Arafat indeed bears much of the responsibility. But Mr. Sharon's tactics have contributed to the downward spiral. At every instance of Palestinian violence, Mr. Sharon has escalated Israel's reprisals, inviting a still bloodier response; just in the last two days, his forces killed at least 15 Palestinians. During lulls in the conflict, Mr. Sharon frequently has been first to renew the fight; during three weeks in December and early January when the Palestinians responded to a call from Mr. Arafat and stopped almost all attacks, Israeli forces killed a dozen Palestinians. ...

No one should underestimate the security challenge facing Israel. Stopping two suicide bombers may have saved dozens of civilian lives. But the effect of many of Mr. Sharon's measures has been to systematically weaken Palestinian self-government and make it impossible for moderates who oppose the violence to press their agenda on Mr. Arafat and his security chiefs. Meanwhile the Bush administration seems trapped; having committed itself to the proposition that Mr. Arafat must stop the violence before any peace process can go forward, the administration now looks on passively as Israeli tanks and planes pound Palestinian positions and Palestinian militias respond with ambushes of Israeli troops. Mr. Arafat yesterday reiterated his call for a cease-fire and met a key Israeli demand by arresting three suspects in the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister; Mr. Sharon responded by demanding Palestinian disarmament and "quiet" before any peace process. Yet his tactics will not bring quiet or peace -- only a steadily worsening war.

Washington Times

Today, President Bush had the opportunity to bring a message of support for religious freedom and tolerance to China's Tsinghua University, a place where students have attempted to live according to their conscience and have been thrown in prison for it. It is the final day of Mr. Bush's six-day visit to Asia, and it could be his crowning moment.

Four graduate students from the university were recently jailed for downloading religious material on the Falun Gong -- a mixture of Taoism, Buddhism and traditional Chinese meditation exercise -- over the Internet and spreading it. Another six students from the university are currently on trial for doing the same. They are not alone. The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy reported that more than 1,600 Falun Gong followers have died as a result of abuse in police custody or in detention centers. Chinese authorities blame the deaths of 1,800 followers on suicide or the prisoners' refusal to take medicine.

The treatment of Falun Gong practitioners is normal fare for any religious dissident in China, whether Protestant Christian, Roman Catholic, Tibetan Buddhist, Uighar Muslim, or any other group the Chinese government decides to ban or refuses to register. ...

As Mr. Bush noted in a press conference yesterday with Chinese leader Jiang Zemin: "All the world's people, including people in China, should be free to choose how they live, how they worship and how they work." ...

Mr. Bush could have settled for the safe, but instead, he chose to bring China the message of freedom. In China, praying for world peace is seen as a dangerous activity. In time, Beijing's officials will learn, however, that it is not prayer, but fighting against freedom of religious expression, that is harming their country.

Chicago Tribune

The death of a journalist working in a danger zone is neither unique to his craft nor more devastating to his family and friends than the death of a combat soldier or an innocent civilian.

It is, though, more mystifying. Why do reporters such as Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal correspondent lured into an elaborate trap and then slain in Pakistan, put themselves in harm's way? Is it the quest for the scoop? A sense of duty? Or, quaint though the notion may sound, is it a search to report important and serpentine events in places where most of us are too risk-averse to travel?

The answer often is hard to pigeonhole, but not for lack of opportunities to search for it. In the last two years alone, dozens of journalists have been killed for their work; in 2000, 10 died just in Sierra Leone at the hands of rebels trying to stifle accounts of their atrocities.

Many of those journalists died in countries where liberty strikes those in power, or those who want power, as a treacherous concept. Pearl's death is unusual only because he was from America, a land where journalists are more free to do their work. Pearl's work wasn't to push a policy or to change a government, but to be the honest broker of information. Yet that is a bizarre distinction in lands where repressive regimes force journalists to work under their thumbs. If Pearl's assailants viewed him as a U.S. agent, their foolishness reflects their inability to comprehend freedoms that we as Americans so often take for granted. ...

But there is little any journalist, especially one working alone on foreign turf, can do to keep someone who wants to kidnap and execute him from doing so--not for who he is, but for the strange exercise of free thought and free expression he represents.

Dallas Morning News

The murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is, as his bosses say, "an act of barbarism that makes a mockery of everything Danny's kidnappers claimed to believe in."

Those words from a statement by Wall Street Journal publisher Peter R. Kann and managing editor Paul E. Steiger reflect the pain of having lost a colleague as well as the anger at senseless violence. "They claimed to be Pakistani nationalists," the statement continued, "but their actions must surely bring shame to all true Pakistani patriots."

Mr. Pearl disappeared in Karachi, Pakistan, on Jan. 23 while attempting to contact Islamic radical groups and to investigate links between alleged shoe bomber Richard Reid and Saudi-born extremist Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. Hope of his being alive vanished when U.S. and Pakistani officials disclosed a video confirming his murder.

What is clear is that his kidnappers, a virtually unknown group calling itself the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, have accomplished nothing for their cause. To the contrary, their execution of a neutral in their battle is an act of barbarism that cannot go unpunished.

If indeed, as some reports have suggested, Mr. Pearl was targeted because he was Jewish, the offense is even more unconscionable, a hate crime as well as a political crime. ...

Mr. Pearl's kidnappers and murderers must all be brought to justice. Islamic clerics and local leaders in Pakistan must disavow these acts as affronts to Islam and support efforts to jail those who would wage any of terrorism's many evil manifestations. It is with this resolve that Mr. Pearl's death will not go unavenged.

Milwaukee Journal

Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl has become the most recent journalist to die in the service of his profession. This latest tragedy is a blow not only to his newspaper, his colleagues, his readers, his family and his friends, but to all Americans.

His death was reported Thursday by Journal publisher Peter Kann based on reports from the State Department and police officials in the Pakistani province of Sind. Later Thursday, the State Department officially confirmed Pearl's death.

Pearl was kidnapped in the Pakistani city of Karachi on Jan. 23 while attempting to arrange an interview with the leader of a radical Muslim faction with purported ties to Richard C. Reid, the British-born accused "shoe bomber."

The kidnapping and murder of Pearl is another grim reminder of the dangers faced by reporters as they go about their work, not just in Muslim countries, but around the world. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 37 journalists were killed last year; 24 died in 2000, and 34 were killed in 1999. Now, Pearl has joined that terrible list.

His murder makes a mockery of whatever idealistic notions may be proclaimed by his abductors. They may identify themselves as Pakistani patriots and devoted Muslims, but their actions stain the reputation of Pakistan and fly in the face of Islam's humanitarian commands. It will not advance their cause, but shame and degrade it.

(Compiled by United Press International)