WOE ARE WE
they report; i deride.
I'm glad that ABC News reporter Bob Woodruff and
ABC News cameraman Doug Vogt survived that roadside bombing. I'm glad they're
back in the U.S. and continuing
to improve, and I hope they both make full and speedy recoveries. I
really do. I just don't want to hear about them
anymore.
I'm tired of waking up to somber reports and breathless updates about their conditions. I'm tired of hearing about their families, getting reactions from their colleagues in Washington, and reading reflections from the rest of their news team in Baghdad. I'm tired of hearing about what good guys they are and what fine reporters they are and what great shocks their injuries were to everyone who knew them. I'm tired of all the talking heads on all the yammering news shows furrowing their brows and wringing their hands and rending their garments as if this story shakes us all to our very cores. Because it doesn't. It barely even breaks our crusts. Because Woodruff and Vogt are just two more bodies, two more numbers, two more sad, wounded logs thrown on the ever-mounting woodpile of American casualties in Iraq. ABC and NBC and CBS and CNN and MSNBC and the saber-rattlers at FOX News Channel rarely bat an eye or bother to squeeze in a bulletin these days when two more U.S. soldiers are blown-up or brain-damaged. But pump a little shrapnel into a couple of journalists, and they're mobilizing so many media troops you'd swear the frontline had now hit the homefront.
And that's because for them, finally, it has.
Just as the Indian Ocean Tsunami frontline finally hit our homefront last winter, when we learned that along with all those poor, wailing brown people, there were also some nice, wealthy white people caught in that water. With the death toll mounting and more than 30,000 people already confirmed dead, all anyone in this country seemed to care about was that Oprah's carpenter, a whole host of rich, insouciant vacationers, and a Sports Illustrated swimsuit super model were among the injured. Now there was a story. And, much like this year's version of play-up-the-people-we-care-about, a simple, none-too-subtle disgrace.
Maybe if more reporters got bombed, shot, stabbed, or otherwise blown to smithereens in Iraq, we might here more about all the other brave American men and women coming home with holes in their heads and shrapnel in their bodies and scars on their souls. Maybe if some white, wealthy news anchors came home in body bags and boxes and flag-draped coffins, we might actually get to see images of those bags and boxes and coffins. Maybe then we'd learn more about the war's ever-climbing body count than we can glean from tossed-off notes and rounded-off numbers slipped between the frenzy of Super Bowl preparations and the tragedy of Lindsay Lohan's tea-cup accident.
Since the War in Iraq began, 2,242 American service men and women have been killed. 16,549 have been wounded. But a couple of American newsman have almost instantly become the war's most lavishly praised, slavishly reported casualties; they've gotten more press, more coverage, more fawning, lingering attention than the rest of those brave men and women combined. NBC's David Bloom got a lot of coverage too, but dying from a pulmonary embolism caused by sitting too long in a tank just can't compare to the sensational detonation and devastation of hard-wired explosives. 63 American service men and women died and 83 more were wounded in Iraq last month. On January 28th, the day that Woodruff and Vogt were injured, 3 American service men were killed in the line of duty. Do you know any of their names? (For the record: Sergeant David L. Herrera, Corporal Felipe C. Barbosa, and Private 1st Class Brian J. Schoff.) Have you heard any of their stories? Have you read any reactions or heard any responses or seen any interviews with their families? Do you expect to?
It is natural, of course, to feel the impact of war, of death, of any injury when the tragedy strikes your own family; I'm more likely to be shaken by the death of my uncle than by the death of my neighbor's uncle. But when your family's job -- indeed, its responsibility -- is to cover life and death and the bloody, barbaric collision of the two in a war zone half a world away, and especially when one of that job's most valuable duties is to report those bloody, barbaric collisions to all the rest of the watching, waiting, worrying families here at home, you would do better to recognize that all the lives over there are equal, and that, if any inequalities are to be found or to be forgiven, they are the ones that err on the sides of the self-sacrificing men and women who fight each day for the freedom of a developing country. Not on the sides of the self-serving men and women who every day practice, and occasionally abuse, the freedom of a pandering press.
I'm tired of waking up to somber reports and breathless updates about their conditions. I'm tired of hearing about their families, getting reactions from their colleagues in Washington, and reading reflections from the rest of their news team in Baghdad. I'm tired of hearing about what good guys they are and what fine reporters they are and what great shocks their injuries were to everyone who knew them. I'm tired of all the talking heads on all the yammering news shows furrowing their brows and wringing their hands and rending their garments as if this story shakes us all to our very cores. Because it doesn't. It barely even breaks our crusts. Because Woodruff and Vogt are just two more bodies, two more numbers, two more sad, wounded logs thrown on the ever-mounting woodpile of American casualties in Iraq. ABC and NBC and CBS and CNN and MSNBC and the saber-rattlers at FOX News Channel rarely bat an eye or bother to squeeze in a bulletin these days when two more U.S. soldiers are blown-up or brain-damaged. But pump a little shrapnel into a couple of journalists, and they're mobilizing so many media troops you'd swear the frontline had now hit the homefront.
And that's because for them, finally, it has.
Just as the Indian Ocean Tsunami frontline finally hit our homefront last winter, when we learned that along with all those poor, wailing brown people, there were also some nice, wealthy white people caught in that water. With the death toll mounting and more than 30,000 people already confirmed dead, all anyone in this country seemed to care about was that Oprah's carpenter, a whole host of rich, insouciant vacationers, and a Sports Illustrated swimsuit super model were among the injured. Now there was a story. And, much like this year's version of play-up-the-people-we-care-about, a simple, none-too-subtle disgrace.
Maybe if more reporters got bombed, shot, stabbed, or otherwise blown to smithereens in Iraq, we might here more about all the other brave American men and women coming home with holes in their heads and shrapnel in their bodies and scars on their souls. Maybe if some white, wealthy news anchors came home in body bags and boxes and flag-draped coffins, we might actually get to see images of those bags and boxes and coffins. Maybe then we'd learn more about the war's ever-climbing body count than we can glean from tossed-off notes and rounded-off numbers slipped between the frenzy of Super Bowl preparations and the tragedy of Lindsay Lohan's tea-cup accident.
Since the War in Iraq began, 2,242 American service men and women have been killed. 16,549 have been wounded. But a couple of American newsman have almost instantly become the war's most lavishly praised, slavishly reported casualties; they've gotten more press, more coverage, more fawning, lingering attention than the rest of those brave men and women combined. NBC's David Bloom got a lot of coverage too, but dying from a pulmonary embolism caused by sitting too long in a tank just can't compare to the sensational detonation and devastation of hard-wired explosives. 63 American service men and women died and 83 more were wounded in Iraq last month. On January 28th, the day that Woodruff and Vogt were injured, 3 American service men were killed in the line of duty. Do you know any of their names? (For the record: Sergeant David L. Herrera, Corporal Felipe C. Barbosa, and Private 1st Class Brian J. Schoff.) Have you heard any of their stories? Have you read any reactions or heard any responses or seen any interviews with their families? Do you expect to?
It is natural, of course, to feel the impact of war, of death, of any injury when the tragedy strikes your own family; I'm more likely to be shaken by the death of my uncle than by the death of my neighbor's uncle. But when your family's job -- indeed, its responsibility -- is to cover life and death and the bloody, barbaric collision of the two in a war zone half a world away, and especially when one of that job's most valuable duties is to report those bloody, barbaric collisions to all the rest of the watching, waiting, worrying families here at home, you would do better to recognize that all the lives over there are equal, and that, if any inequalities are to be found or to be forgiven, they are the ones that err on the sides of the self-sacrificing men and women who fight each day for the freedom of a developing country. Not on the sides of the self-serving men and women who every day practice, and occasionally abuse, the freedom of a pandering press.
Posted: Wed - February 1, 2006 at 03:54 PM
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Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM
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Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM