Wedeman: Journalists feel solidarity with Pearl

CNN's Ben Wedeman

(CNN) -- The kidnapping of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and the threatening warning aimed at American journalists to leave Pakistan by Saturday is not quelling CNN Correspondent Ben Wedeman's resolve to cover the news there.

As he told CNN's Anderson Cooper from his posting in Karachi, Pakistan, Wedeman and other journalists feel a sense of duty to their missing colleague.

COOPER: How seriously are you taking this threat from Daniel Pearl's kidnappers to other journalists?

WEDEMAN: Well, we certainly are taking it very seriously indeed. We're taking all the precautions we can. We're basically trying to stay out of areas that have a history of trouble.

It's worth mentioning, however, that Karachi itself is a city – a very big city – where there have, in the past, been many kidnappings, some for ransom, others for political motives. But basically we have to be more careful. We have to be very alert when we go out. We have to look at our surroundings. We do go out with a certain amount of security protection, but by and large we are still functioning as we normally would.

And it's worth mentioning that Mr. Pearl was doing the same sort of thing that any of us would be doing as journalists: going out and pursuing a story. In his case he was trying to follow leads in the case of Richard Reid -- the British man accused of trying to bomb an American airliner with explosives hidden in his shoes -- and it just looks like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

COOPER: Have you given any thought to leaving Pakistan?

WEDEMAN: We think about it all the time and we're constantly discussing it with our team. But we have no plans to leave Karachi or Pakistan. Now I myself have never met Mr. Pearl, but I know people who have and there's a certain amount of professional solidarity here. He's a journalist, he was doing something we all normally do and therefore we feel it would be betrayal -- so to speak -- to leave at this point because we do serve a purpose in trying to get the information out about what we know about him and his kidnappers and doing what we can in hopes that he will be released.