Daniel Pearl

Journalist

• Born: October 10, 1963
• Birthplace: Princeton, New Jersey
• Died: February 1, 2002
• Place of death: Karachi, Pakistan

A Wall Street Journal investigative reporter who covered such notable events as the war in the Balkans and Kosovo, Pearl was abducted by a Pakistani militant group in 2002 and beheaded.

Early Life

Daniel Pearl (purl) was born in Princeton, New Jersey, to Judea and Ruth Pearl. Judea is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles; Ruth is of Iraqi Jewish heritage. In 1966, three years after their son’s birth, the family moved to California. Daniel Pearl grew up with a love of music, academics, and soccer, but music struck a powerful chord with him. He had his first violin lesson in 1970, and after that he learned to play other instruments, including the electric violin, fiddle, and mandolin. Pearl displayed his musical virtuosity throughout his life, writing songs and performing.

As a student at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, California, Pearl excelled in his schoolwork. He received an exceptionally high score on the English portion of the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT), ranking fifteenth in the country, and he was a National Merit Scholar. As a student at Stanford University and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, Pearl cultivated his budding journalistic skills. He showcased his talents by cofounding Stanford Commentary, a student newspaper that explored controversial issues. While his campus newspaper was short-lived, Pearl’s talent was not. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in communications, Pearl obtained a job working for the North Adams Transcript, a Massachusetts newspaper.

Life’s Work

After working at a string of different newspapers, Pearl began building a career at The Wall Street Journal in 1990. His first job was working in its Atlanta bureau, but Pearl quickly moved through the ranks. After a short time he was transferred to the Washington bureau and then to the London bureau. While working in London, Pearl began covering foreign affairs as a Middle East correspondent and, within time, made his way from London to Paris. During the time Pearl was working as a foreign correspondent, he met Mariane Van Neyenhoff. They were married in 1999, just a year after they were introduced.

Pearl was appointed chief of The Wall Street Journal’s South African bureau in Bombay, India, in 2000. His talent for writing on foreign affairs was brilliant at this time. He wrote everything from soft pieces that highlighted other cultures to investigative articles about war and its devastation. Among his prominent successes were articles written in late 1999 about the war in Kosovo, in which he quelled rumors that genocide was rampant.

It was in Bombay that Pearl began writing about terrorism, a topic that would lead to his demise. On January 23, 2002, while pursuing an interview with the spiritual leader Sheik Gilani, Pearl was kidnapped by a Pakistani militant group in the city of Karachi. The group sent messages to U.S. officials, claiming that they had caught a spy. They demanded that terror detainees be freed and that fighter jets be sent to the government of Pakistan. However, Pearl’s life reached an abrupt end on February 1. The details of his murder were revealed just twenty days later, when the militant group broadcast a brutal three-minute video showing Pearl being beheaded.

Significance

Pearl’s death sent shock waves around the world and served as an important reminder to journalists of the dangers of reporting abroad. Pearl’s execution video was broadcast across the Internet, and media outlets everywhere printed articles detailing what had happened to The Wall Street Journal reporter. Months after his death, his family started the Daniel Pearl Foundation, which gives presentations about Pearl’s life and the importance of understanding other cultures through words and music. Pearl’s murder was also an unsettling indication of cultural conflict. The Daniel Pearl Foundation claims one of the reasons Pearl was murdered was because of his heritage as an American Jew, which Pearl spoke about in his execution video.

No matter what reasons Pearl’s captors had for murdering him, his legacy has stood the test of time. He has been acknowledged in high schools and award programs throughout the United States. His life was commemorated in a 2007 film titled A Mighty Heart. On May 19, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into legislation the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act, which aims to protect American journalists stationed all over the world.

Bibliography

Block, Robert, and Daniel Pearl. “Body Count: War in Kosovo Was Cruel, Bitter, Savage; Genocide It Wasn’t.” The Wall Street Journal, December 31, 1999, p. A1. One of Pearl’s investigative articles published during his time in Paris.

Cooper, Helene, and Daniel Pearl. At Home in the World: Collected Writings from The Wall Street Journal. New York: Free Press, 2002. An extensive collection of articles written by Pearl in his tenure at The Wall Street Journal.

Kennedy, Dan. “The Daniel Pearl Video: A Journalist Explains Why Its Horrific Images Should Be Treated as News.” Nieman Reports 56, no. 3 (Fall, 2002): 80. An examination of the circumstances behind Pearl’s death and why the video of his execution is important for the journalistic world.

Vajpeyi, Ananya. “Through Western Eyes.” New Statesmen 137, no. 4862 (September, 2007): 38-39. An analysis of the 2007 film A Mighty Heart, based on the life of Daniel and Mariane Pearl and starring Angelina Jolie. The article claims that the Karachi portrayed in the film is not an accurate representation of the city of the reporter’s death.