Posted on 01/30/2006 4:21:12 AM PST by truthandlife
Bob Woodruff had a comfortable career in corporate law ahead of him when he took a year away to teach in China. It was 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square protest, and amid the chaos, Woodruff discovered his passion for journalism.
He was reporting from of another volatile part of the world on Sunday, this time as the 44-year-old co-anchor of ABC News' "World News Tonight," when an explosive device detonated, seriously injuring him and a cameraman north of Baghdad, Iraq.
Woodruff grew up in the Detroit area and attended Colgate University and the University of Michigan law school before taking a corporate law job in New York.
Along the way, he also learned Chinese, and he decided to spend part of 1989 in Beijing teaching law. When the Tiananmen Square protests began, he got involved, signing on as a translator for CBS News anchor Dan Rather.
"When I realized there was a job that existed in this world where I could be in the middle of huge world events and actually get paid for it, it was an epiphany for me," Woodruff told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
Maybe I am just ignorant on how they teach in a University in communist China but it just doesn't seem like you would be teaching the law of democracy. The Chinese gov't wouldn't let you.
The only comment made on this thread before you started attacking Freepers for their comments was a sarcastic comment about the rule of law in China, not about Woodruff. If you've seen things elsewhere that you think are about this man, then criticize those making the comments in those threads.
My comments were about the coverage being used to make Woodruff seem better than real heroes because he lives his life talking about what others actually do. I'm not denigrating him because of who he is, but I'm not standing for those lionizing him for being just another victim of an IED, either.
Believe it or not, there IS a difference between this reporter who finally found the time to find Iraq and the soldiers who are doing someting about Iraq.
I thought we were better than that.
That's why I was scared to get into the larger tread on this story. I had a feeling, since he's a Lefty Journalist, this story would make light of that fact and not repect the 'Human Being'.
You were right.
In this scene,both the soldier and Woodruff were smiling broadly and were obviously enjoying themselves immensely.
My guess is that Woodruff is one of the darlings of DUmmie Land.
You mean like every national news lefty journalist reports every soldier death as a statistic and not a 'human being' with a family that loves him?
I did; to this very poster, who hurriedly decided to put up a thread about it, alluding to him being involved in something nefarious.
It's TACKY.
Believe it or not, there IS a difference between this reporter who finally found the time to find Iraq...
That's just the kind of remark I'm talking about; I don't know this man and I'm not defending him, but from what little I have read about him yesterday and today, that's just not true. He's been there NUMEROUS times; and to Afghanistan and to North Korea and loads of other places.
— - Bob Woodruff is co-anchor of ABC News' "World News Tonight," a role he has held since January 2006.
Previously the anchor of the weekend edition of "World News Tonight" and one of ABC News' top correspondents, Woodruff has covered major stories throughout the country and around the world. His reports from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina helped focus the nation's attention on the building tragedy there. He was ABC's lead correspondent on the Asian Tsunami, reporting from Banda Aceh, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Woodruff has covered the entire so-called "axis of evil," the nuclear showdown in Iran, and in June 2005 he got unprecedented access to the secretive country of North Korea. In the last presidential election Woodruff reported on the campaign of Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. He also has reported extensively on the continuing unrest in Iraq from Baghdad, Najaf, Nassariya and Basra. During the initial invasion in March 2003, Woodruff reported from the front lines as an embedded journalist with the First Marine Division, 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion.
Before moving to New York in 2002, Woodruff worked out of ABC News' London Bureau. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he was among the first Western reporters to filed from Pakistan and was one of ABC News' lead foreign correspondents during the war in Afghanistan, reporting from Kabul and Kandahar on the fall of the Taliban. His overseas reporting of the fallout from Sept. 11 was part of ABC News' coverage recognized with the Alfred I. Dupont Award and the George Foster Peabody Award, the two highest honors in broadcast journalism. He was also a part of the ABC News team recognized with an Alfred I. duPont award for live coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI.
Before becoming a journalist Woodruff was an attorney. But in 1989 while teaching law in Beijing he was hired by CBS News to work as a translator during the Tiananmen Square uprising, and a short time later he changed careers. As ABC News' Justice Department correspondent in Washington in the late 1990s, Woodruff covered the office of Attorney General Janet Reno, the FBI and ATF. In 1999 he reported from Belgrade and Kosovo during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Since then he has reported extensively on Europe and the Middle East.
Prior to joining ABC News, Woodruff was a reporter for KCPM-TV, the NBC affiliate in Redding, Calif., from 1991 to 1992; for the CBS affiliate WTVR-TV in Richmond, Va., from 1992 to 1994; and for KNXV-TV, the ABC affiliate in Phoenix, Ariz. from 1994 to 1996. He joined ABC News in 1996, based in the network's Chicago bureau.
Woodruff has a law degree from the University of Michigan Law School and a B.A. from Colgate University. He is married and has four children.
See #27 for your 'perspective'
I took a look and see nothing wrong. Enlighten me.
You don't even realize that you're making OUR point, do you?
You're carping about how THEY act while YOU'RE doing it!
So, he's better than every other American who's been wounded in Iraq? What has he done to make Iraq better? What is your point?
I never attacked Woodruff. I attacked the media for making him a hero when he's merely an observer, and an inaccurate one at that. Show me not that he's been there. Show me where he's given fair and balanced coverage while he's been there.
He's being made a hero because his victimhood of one of the attacks that happens there every day 'proves' the false media paradigm that we're losing in Iraq.
If he had completed the convoy, found out the police were doing a great job (which they are), and seen for himself that a large part of the success in Iraq is due to U.S. forces training competent soldiers and policemen (which happens every day, day-in, day-out) you wouldn't have heard a damn word about Woodruff's trip through Taji. His own story wouldn't have made his own network's web page, let alone it's national broadcast.
Where am I wrong? I don't wish Woodruff ill, and I, too, pray for his and his cameraman's recovery.
I still don't think he's a hero or should be portrayed as one.
Nobody's calling him a hero.
And we'll just have to wait to hear what his report was, won't we?
Before you go any farther down the road of attacking me for failing to recognize Woodruff for being in Iraq, let me offer you some perspective.
The only soldier my unit lost in Iraq was shot in the back in Taji, probably on the same stretch of road Woodruff got attacked. You didn’t hear SPC Perez’s name on the evening news. You didn’t hear about his family. You didn’t hear about the other soldiers in the vehicle with him. You didn’t know that he was bringing valuable supplies from Kuwait to the theater distribution center in Balad. You didn’t hear how much his colleagues (like me) respected him. You didn’t hear about how he volunteered to go on the resupply convoy, even though he could have stayed in relative safety at the Aid Station on the FOB. You didn’t hear about the other times he volunteered to go with his comrades on missions to recover ammunition Saddam left laying around the country for later use by Fedayeen Saddam who are planting IEDs. You didn’t hear how he saved his First Sergeant and the Sergeant manning the machine gun in his HMMWV by making sure he cleared the ambush area after he got shot, but before he passed out. You didn’t hear about the way SPC Perez was mourned. If you were ‘lucky’, you heard that a soldier died in Iraq, but you probably didn’t even notice that announcement.
So, explain to me again why I should be paying Mr. Woodruff special attention because he is a reporter who was wounded by an IED while doing nothing special?
Nobody's asking you to pay him special attention; I certainly didn't.
But why won't you afford him the respect that you say is so lacking for your people?
You're railing against a system that is stacked against us by trying to imply that this man doesn't matter because he's not in the military.
They're not? All this coverage of his injury isn't asking me to pay special attention to Woodruff? How can you say that? How many other Americans have had this kind of attention paid to their injuries in Iraq?
But why won't you afford him the respect that you say is so lacking for your people?
I'm not asking to 'afford him the respect...lacking for your people'" I'm asking why he's being afforded MORE respect than anyone else.
Furthermore, since when did soldiers become "my" people and not "our" people. Since when does the same definition not apply to all Americans, including Woodruff AND Perez? What f___ing paper do you work for that a reporter gets more consideration as being an American than a soldier or any other American? How long have you been lurking here now that your bias against soldiers is finally leaking out?
You're railing against a system that is stacked against us by trying to imply that this man doesn't matter because he's not in the military.
I never said or implied any such thing. I questioned why his story is any more relevant than that of any other American in Iraq. Clearly it's your own bias that is at work here, not mine.
To be fair to "the media" when the networks do cover specific incidents such as IED attacks in ways that highlight the sacrifice of individual or units they are often attacked for "only reporting the negatives" - to some extent from their perspective it's a "dammed if you do dammed if you don't" situation.
Myself, I'm pleased that a major network anchor actually got off his butt, out of the studio, out of the Green zone, and put himself at the same kind of risks that US soldiers experience every day - if we want more accurate reporting of what's happening in Iraq, that one way we are going to get it. And I also note that he was taking risks that at lot of elected and unelected US officials who have visited Iraq feel are too great, or that they are too important, to take.
This guy put himself in harm's way to get the story... now lets see if if we will be seeing "first-person" accounts of the superb job the US military did of evacuating and treating the wounded from this attack.
He was a successful corporate lawyer before he went to China. Also, throughout all the reporting on his injuries, I've not heard whether anyone else was injured in the explosion and how they're doing. I think that's part of what's ticking off people on these Woodruff threads.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.