Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from David Ignatius's full February 14th column in the Washington Post.

A death threat arrived last week in the e-mail of James Njoroge Wachai, a Kenyan journalist who has written about the tribal conflict there for PostGlobal, a Web discussion I host with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. The authors of the threatening note claimed they were part of the "gang of odm," meaning that they were supporters of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) that is challenging President Mwai Kibaki.

"You are writing bad articles about ODM in American newspapers," the note said. "We are watching you and you are a marked man. . . . You will die like a cow."

Wachai exemplifies the kind of open global discussion we sought when we created PostGlobal two years ago. His first post for us, "Don't Balkanize Kenya," denounced politicians in his country who were exploiting tribal divisions to settle political scores. A second post, "Peacemakers Unfit for Peace," chided African leaders who were offering Kenya advice while ignoring human rights abuses in their own back yards. He just proposed a new piece asking why the State Department is so wary of using the phrase "ethnic cleansing" to describe the slaughter in Kenya.

Good journalism is about people writing the truth as they see it. James Wachai is our colleague in that effort. When someone threatens him, they threaten our common endeavor.