On My Mind: Too Close For Comfort

Oct. 14 -- When I first heard that Tom Brokaw's assistant at NBC News had contracted a cutaneous case of anthrax after opening one of the anchor's letters, I was devastated.

I felt sorry for her and sad for Tom. The letter had been addressed to him, no doubt the intended target. Health officials tested hundreds of NBC employees to see how widespread the problem might be. Fortunately, it appears only 5 people suffered an exposure to the bacterium.

Was the media now the target for terrorism? Bioterrorism? American Media, where the first anthrax cases were reported, publishes supermarket tabloids in Boca Raton, Florida. There was a serious scare at a Microsoft facility in Reno, Nevada, and suspicious mail and packages turned up at the New York Times, the Columbus Post Dispatch, the St. Petersburg Times, and the Los Angeles Times.

All of us in the media are taking special precautions about mail and packages. And suddenly, mail has joined, airplanes, box cutters, high-rise buildings, shopping malls, and sports arenas as objects and venues of fear.

Government officials have not been able to make a direct link between the anthrax scares and the events of Sept. 11 as another terrorist tactic in Osama Bin Laden's jihad against the United States. But there are strong suspicions that they are.

I shouldn't have been surprised that the news media would be targeted in the United States. To kill the message, you've got to kill the messengers, or at least scare them half to death. For the past eleven years I have been meeting journalists from around the world, who have been intimidated, harassed, raped, beaten, shot, bombed, thrown in jail, simply for attempting to speak or write the truth.

Courage to Report

As a member and now head of the International Women's Media Foundation, our organization has honored 38 women journalists who have displayed remarkable courage in practicing our profession.

Two days from now I will help present Courage in Journalism awards to Carmen Gurruchaga of Spain whose home and office were firebombed by members of the Basque Separatist movement who wanted to silence her. Another will go to Jineth Bedoya of Colombia, who was drugged, kidnapped and gang raped for her newspaper reporting on the civil war between right wing terrorists and leftist guerillas. The third will go to Amal Abbas of Sudan, the first female editor-in-chief in the Muslim-led country. Her newspaper was shut down, she was fined, and jailed for reporting on government corruption. Despite the dangers they still face, these brave women continue to inform readers about the wrongdoing of those who would like to see them dead.