Posted on 02/01/2006 6:32:03 AM PST by armydawg1
Some US troops question Woodruff coverage By PAMELA HESS UPI Pentagon Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- The American media stood up and took notice when an improvised explosive device grievously injured an ABC News crew Sunday.
In Iraq, and throughout the military, there is sympathy and concern for anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt, but there is also this question:
"Why do you think this is such a huge story?" wrote an officer stationed in Baqubah, Iraq, Monday via e-mail. "It's a bit stunning to us over here how absolutely dominant the story is on every network and front page. I mean, you'd think we lost the entire 1st Marine Division or something.
"There's a lot of grumbling from guys at all ranks about it. That's a really impolite and impolitic thing to say ... but it's what you would hear over here."
At least 2,242 troops have died in Iraq since the war's start, 1,753 of them killed in action. Another 16,000 have been injured, half of them seriously enough to require evacuation from the battlefield. According to the Pentagon, 60 percent of the deaths are the result of IEDs. IEDs have injured more than 9,200 troops, nine times more than gunshots.
"The point that is currently being made (is that) that press folks are more important than mere military folks," a senior military officer told UPI Tuesday.
The unavoidable consequence of war is this: People are savagely wounded and killed. Soldiers in Iraq watching the coverage on satellite television and reading the news on the Internet are getting the impression that the press has only just discovered this fact.
It's not quite as simple as that, of course. Military personnel often express frustration that the media harps on military casualty reports at the expense of what they consider their successes in Iraq.
However, as it promoted its story on Woodruff and Vogt Monday evening, the local ABC News affiliate in Washington showed a montage of exploding vehicles in Iraq -- footage culled largely from insurgents, who videotape the attacks and post them on Web sites to advertise or magnify their successes.
The families of the 76 troops killed and 533 wounded in action in Iraq from the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland might say the war had already come home.
"It's just a bit frustrating to see something so dramatized that happens every day to some 20-year-old American -- or worse to 10, 30-year-old Iraqi soldiers or cops alongside us. Some of the stories don't even mention the Iraqi casualties in this attack, as if they're meaningless," wrote the officer in Baqubah.
Kathryn Montgomery, a professor at American University's School of Communication, has been thinking the same thing.
"When you see the kind of coverage this story is getting it draws attention to the lack of coverage that hundreds of cases don't get," said Montgomery.
Having a personal connection to someone injured or killed on the battlefield is a relatively rare experience for journalists. Fewer than 1 percent of the U.S. population is part of the military; very few reporters have served. The war is comfortably distant, until a fellow journalist is affected. It could have been me, we think. The full weight of war is hard to comprehend until it happens to you, or someone you know, or someone like you.
Incidents like the serious wounding of Woodruff are rare. It has never before happened to any anchorperson for any of the U.S. television networks. Consequently, the event had significant news value.
But many journalists have been injured and killed covering the current conflict in Iraq: According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 61 have died from hostile action since March 2003, many of them Iraqi or Arab and therefore unfamiliar. That compares to 66 journalists killed during the entire Vietnam War, according to the Freedom Forum.
Modern American celebrity culture has certainly magnified the latest incident: Woodruff is recognizable, relatable, respectable. He was selected for his job as co-anchor not just for his undoubted journalistic credentials but also because ABC decided he was the kind of person Americans would want to welcome into their homes every night. His injury, therefore, feels personal to many viewers.
"He's the kind of celebrity we feel we know. That's the mature of these anchors. But we feel we know these people and we care what happens to them," Montgomery said.
That leaves the uncomfortable question about how much the media, or the American public, cares about the injured who are less well known, but in just as dire straits.
ABC News' national broadcast Monday ran coverage on the extremely well equipped field and manned hospital at Balad Air Base, a transportable emergency room with not one but two neurosurgeons on duty, better than most emergency rooms in the United States.
It was a story ABC News became aware of because that was where Woodruff and Vogt were treated. It was not a story ABC necessarily had reason to do before; there was no news hook. However, this was where hundreds of wounded soldiers and Marines had previously been stabilized before being moved to Landstuhl Air Base.
"As we are hearing the details of Bob Woodruff's medical care and how he was shipped to Germany, and we go inside the operating room, (we realize) it's a part of the war that the press has basically ignored," said Montgomery.
In the midst of a two-month reporting trip in Iraq in 2005, I stopped at the Balad emergency hospital, toured it for an hour and interviewed a dozen doctors and nurses. I couldn't find a news hook to write about it, so I didn't.
Woodruff volunteered for the assignment, and he was where he ought to have been because he wanted to report with authority on Iraq. But reporters' trips to Iraq are brief by comparison to soldiers, and we calculate the risks before going out on a mission. Soldiers and Marines do not have the option of demurring, and they are almost guaranteed to see colleagues maimed and killed during their seven to 12 months deployed there. They are as much volunteers as Woodruff in Iraq, and less well paid.
Here is an incomplete list of American service members who were killed by hostile fire in Iraq that same week that Woodruff and Vogt were hit. The Pentagon does not release the names of the injured.
Spc. Brian J. Schoff, 22, of Manchester, Tenn., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Jan. 28, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV.
Sgt. David L. Herrera, 26, of Oceanside, Calif., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Jan. 28, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.
Lance Cpl. Billy D. Brixey Jr., 21, of Ferriday, La., died Jan. 27 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, from wounds received as a result of an improvised explosive device while traveling in a convoy in Afghanistan on Jan. 25.
Lance Cpl. Hugo R. Lopez, 20, of La Habra, Calif., died Jan. 27 at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, from wounds sustained from an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Rawah, Iraq, on Nov. 20, 2005.
Staff Sgt. Jerry M. Durbin Jr., 26, of Spring, Texas, died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Jan. 25, when an improvised explosive device exploded near his dismounted patrol during combat operations.
Sgt. Joshua A. Johnson, 24, of Richford, Vt., died in Ramadi, Iraq, on Jan. 25, when a rocket propelled grenade struck his vehicle during combat operations.
Staff Sgt. Lance M. Chase, 32, of Oklahoma City, Okla., and Pfc. Peter D. Wagler, 18, of Partridge, Kan., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Jan. 23, of wounds sustained that day when an improvised explosive device detonated near their M1A2 Abrams tank during patrol operations.
Sgt. Sean H. Miles, 28, of Midlothian, Va., was killed in action Jan. 24 from small arms fire while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Karmah, Iraq.
Sgt. Matthew D. Hunter, 31, of Valley Grove, W.Va., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Jan. 23, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his dismounted patrol during combat operations.
Sgt. Sean H. Miles, 28, of Midlothian, Va., was killed in action Jan. 24 from small arms fire while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Karmah, Iraq.
Tech. Sgt. Jason L. Norton, 32, of Miami, Okla. and Staff Sgt. Brian McElroy, 28, of San Antonio, Texas, were killed Jan. 22, when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device while conducting convoy escort duties in the vicinity of Taji, Iraq.
The troops have a right to be disgusted. Now the taxpayers do also. ABC sent him to Iraq, ABC should pay his damned medical bills.
The men and women in the military believe in their mission and the press wants to ignore that fact.
The media is going to spin this into an anti-war message.
That is what they do.
A reporter in a war zone is in danger. Dog bites man. Neither are stories.
Now, if Bob Woodruff had dived in front of an IED to save the life of a soldier, THAT would be a story.
A-Men
That's certainly true to the people who do the reporting - the "press folks!"
Hey, com'on now. They're focusing on these two folks 'cause they're "journalists". Therefore, they are smarter and better than the rest of us and shouldn't have been hurt. See, easy to explain.
Meanwhile, ABC should be footing the medical bills for these two men. And yes, prayers for them and I hope they fully recover. And let's NEVER forget the real soldiers and Marines who were killed in Iraq. They went there to protect us. God bless'em.
Do you know this for a fact? It is equally possible his medical insurance will be billed for his care.
Last night on ABC's evening news it was clearly pointed out that the ABC network was picking up the entire tab for all medical expenses incurred in the treatment of their employees. They are being treated at military hospitals because they are the most experienced in dealing with these types of injuries.
What I find disgusting is the fact every media whore on radio or TV doesn't refer to him as Bob Woodruff.......just "Bob" as though anyone listening would certainly know just who "Bob" was.
And they see themselfs as pee-ers.
During the Viet Nam conflict it became clear that for many upper middle class Americans people in the military were considered slightly less than human. In 1969, when a recent graduate of the University of Maryland, who was a draftee, was killed when the M-113 he was driving was mined the reactions of his parents were interesting. It wasn't just that these educated white collar types (he was a government bureaucrat and she a school teacher) opposed the war and conscription. Their tone was that it was illegitimate to expose to harm such a superior humanoid as their son a math major after all.
I am pretty certain that their attitudes towards other soldiers or other draftees who had high school educations or less and who were farmers, factory workers, and such was that these people really didn't matter. I certainly picked up on this rancid attitude being from the college educated white collar strata and being an enlisted person (even worse one who volunteered) at the time. The scarcely veiled contempt for military people was at first hurtful and then something that I viewed with frigid contempt. These same attitudes of 'there are those who count and those who don't' is at the root of the ridiculously overblown coverage of Woodruff's wounding. He is a special person who counts and his injuries are the stigmata of a martyr and just to horrible to contemplate by these effete, snobbish, condescending, cowards.
Yes, that is what I heard this morning, too, and it makes my blood boil! Let ABC foot the bleepin' bill.
The media barely mentioned Ollie North's heroism early in the war. He was "media" too, yet saved some lives by his actions.
That was a visitor's unwelcome post. My apologies. They are hereby banned and suspended from my apartment.
The press do their best to cast the military in a bad light and then when they get in danger who do they run to for protection and help.
I wish the reporters and their families all the best BUT... the coverage as if this were a national tragedy really gets under my skin.
While I dont think everyone in the media is a whore, I agree with you. My wife, who is in the media (but is, thankfully, not a whore) did not know who this guy was until about two hours after the first reports.
I think its interesting that most of the reporters in country were more concerned about the camera guy. THOSE are the unsung media heroes. They are not on air, and they have to go out with all of the reporters--the good and the bad. They get the footage...and then the reporters and editors chop it up to suit their needs.
I feel bad for him.
Sorry for any unintended offense. I was overcome by an attack of extreme aggravation at several days of "Bob" and "Doug" from obscure news readers who wouldn't know "Bob" and "Doug" if they fell on their heads. Of course there are some great people in the media who take their jobs seriously, behave ethically, sensibly and professionally and are not common gossips. You sound as if you had the wonderful sense to marry a woman who is among them. I fully agree with you that the real stars are the people who gather the data and usually don't have a choice about assignments. I heard that Doug Vogt's injuries were less severe and that he's doing better. I'd like it if they both recovered fully and were assigned to less hazardous pursuits.
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