News Anchor Injured in Iraq

It was shocking to read that ABC "World News Tonight" co-anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were injured in an explosion while they were working as imbedded journalists in Iraq on Sunday. Perhaps the most surprising element of the story is the fact that this is a rare occurrence, normally I do not see stories of journalists hurt in attacks on the military personnel that they are following. I am surprised that more of these types of stories do not exist with the amount of journalists performing these tasks. It seems as though the military does a very good job protecting themselves and the journalists who are imbedded with them.

The only problem I had with the format of the story was that in the lead the writer (David Bauder) identifies Bob Woodruff but says "a cameraman" when referring to Dough Vogt. Later in the story Vogt is identified by name, and the reader get a brief history on him (the story tells us that Vogt is an award-winning cameraman). If I were writing this story I would have mentioned Vogt by name in the lead and not waited until later in the story to do so. Another aspect that I would have liked to see how many journalists suffer the same fate as Woodruff and Vogt did, because it wasn't addressed in this story. Even though I have said it seems like not many of these situations happen, I do not know for sure, and would be interested in seeing some sort of report on how many journalists have been injured while they were imbedded.

Publish Date: January 30, 2006 in the Missourian.