Most of the feedback from around the world has been very supportive, and very aggrieved. I’ve heard from a lot of people who are dissidents who are living abroad who are very afraid. I think being honest about the human toll these things can take on colleagues and friends is important. At the very least, if it was his words at The Post that perhaps put him at risk, I feel that responsibility.
It does feel weird to be a part of the story, but at the same time, an editor’s job is to protect your writers. This is such a horrific tragedy. It would compound the tragedy if it happened and no one was talking about it, and it became just another news story, another journalist swallowed up by bad actors. Even though he wasn’t full-time in the building, Jamal was one of us. This is not an attack just on him. It’s an attack on us. And I want to show that journalists are human.
On Thursday, The Post devoted its entire Op-Ed page to Jamal’s final column, which you received from his assistant the day after he was reported missing. In a preface, you wrote: “The Post held off publishing it because we hoped Jamal would come back to us so that he and I could edit it together. Now I have to accept: That is not going to happen.” Have the last two weeks taken a toll on you?
It’s been exhausting. My sleeping is not awesome. I’m going to try to take some time off, hopefully soon, to try to recover. I have to be a little more wary of security. Just being a bit more vigilant about who I talk to and protecting myself online. What’s been hard is, you have these particularly grotesque details about what they allegedly did to him — it brings the shock and the disgust back all over again.
At the same time, I have a lot of energy. I just hope, I pray that something good comes out of this. It will be hard for me to deal if we just kind of turn away and shrug and accept this as just politics, this is just the Middle East. I don’t want to be that cynical.
It’s been a roller coaster not to have answers about his fate. It feels like a movie. And I just keep thinking, “Gosh, if that had happened to any other Saudi journalist, I could see myself hopping on WhatsApp and calling Jamal and asking, ‘Hey — can I have a piece?’” It feels disorienting to me not to have his voice here.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/business/media/karen-attiah-jamal-kashoggi-editor-washington-post.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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