Over at the Corner, Byron York wonders whether the bomb attack that injured ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman Doug Vogt is getting too much coverage:
Perhaps some press critic will explore that question. And perhaps that critic will compare coverage of the Woodruff attack with coverage of the deaths of U.S. Army Private Brian J. Schoff, of Manchester, Tennessee, and Sergeant David L. Herrera, of Oceanside, California, who, according to Army records listed in icasualties.org, were killed in action — hostile fire, IED attack — in Baghdad on January 28.
Some press critics have explored the question. In a Washington Post Live Online chat, Howard Kurtz said:
It’s a function of fame (although in the case of Jill Carroll, a relatively obscure stringer, it may have had to do with the tragic spectacle of a female journalist being kidnapped). Bob Woodruff is the co-anchor of ABC’s evening news. Does that make him more important than all the soldiers or American contractors who are wounded virtually every day? No, of course not. But it does make him a symbol — of the vulnerability of U.S. troops to these roadside IEDs, of the media’s difficulty in covering this war. Woodruff and Vogt, of course, risked their lives precisely so they could tell the story of the war, and specifically whether Iraqi troops are able to assume more of the burden from the American forces.
That sounds right. In fact, the Woodruff angle has had the positive effect of leading some vocal critics of the war in Iraq — like MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann — to highlight some of the U.S. military’s amazing successes. Last night, Olbermann’s Countdown featured a report on the Air Force medical center at Balad, where Woodruff and Vogt were treated. The medical center at Balad is one of the most successful combat hospitals in history, and the report ended with the statistic that if an injured U.S. soldier makes it to Balad, the chance that he or she will leave alive is 96 percent.
The downside, of course, is that the usual suspects have used the incident to declare Iraq a disaster (again). This time it was CNN’s Christiane Amanpour:
The war in Iraq has basically turned out to be a disaster and journalists have paid for it, paid for the privilege of witnessing and reporting that and so have many, many other people who have been there.
The real problem with the coverage of the Woodruff story is that it’s allowed some critics — who already opposed the war — to draw attention to the journalists rather than the troops in a way that cheapens the enormous sacrifices of the latter.