The real Daniel Pearl lost in Hollywood PR machine

Asra Nomani, the former Wall Street Journal reporter who worked with reporter Daniel Pearl before he was killed in Pakistan, writes in a column for the Washington Post that the journalist she knew gets lost in the Hollywood PR machine that spit out the movie “Mighty Heart.”

Nomani wrote, “Lost in the PR machine and the heroism hoopla is Danny, whose death is at the center of the story. After all, as one person involved in the production candidly told me: Danny can’t do interviews. So in the Associated Press review, he amounts to nothing more than a parenthetical phrase.

“But Danny was not parenthetical. He deserves to be remembered fully. He was charming and charismatic. He was an outstanding investigative reporter with an irreverent streak. The year before he died, I’d taken a leave from the Journal to work on a book, and he faxed me an article from an Indian magazine that he thought would help with my research. ‘From your assistant, Danny,’ he scrawled across the cover sheet, in his self-deprecating style.

“He observed the media machine with a contrarian, skeptical eye. In November 2001, after the war in Afghanistan had begun, he wrote to me: ‘I’m getting to Pakistan just in time for the lull between ‘well, more bombings, more deaths — who cares now?’ and ‘shit, it’s December, we have to round out our prize packages” with big articles for awards such as the Pulitzers. ‘Okay, no more cynicism from here,’ he signed off. ‘I’m going to be a father and must maintain an idyllic view of the world.’

“Danny had me teach him how to say ‘Do I look like a fool?’ in Urdu so he could tell off Mumbai taxi drivers who tried to overcharge him. Once, shortly after arriving in Peshawar on an assignment, he wrote me: ‘I’m at the Pearl Continental, wasn’t able to get a free room despite my argument that I was the owner.’

“Don’t look for that personality in the movie. You won’t find it.”

Read more here. Earlier this month, Nomani establishment of the Pearl Project, a joint faculty-student investigative reporting project at Georgetown University that will aim to find out who really killed Pearl and why.