Over the Thanksgiving holiday, after overeating a great meal and stuffing ourselves on football, we pondered the blessings of this business. One, which cannot be overstated, is the willingness of journalists to risk their lives to bring us stories that must be told. We were painfully reminded of that over the past few months as kidnapped reporters were murdered by ISIS terrorists.
This harsh reality also came up eloquently two weeks ago, courtesy of Chris Dodd, Motion Picture Association of America chairman and a former senator. In accepting a Free Speech award from The Media Institute, Dodd talked about his work on the Daniel Pearl Free Speech Act a decade ago, an effort to protect reporters worldwide from censure and from threats to their safety.
Pearl, a Wall Street Journal staffer and former D.C.-based telecommunications reporter, was kidnapped and killed by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002.
So, in the spirit of gathering valued family and friends around the holidays, we honor the members of the journalistic family who are no longer with us. Shalom.
