Week 2 Opinion - In My Opinion.....

Bob Woodruff, the co-anchor of the "World News Tonight" was seriously injured in an IED attack while covering a story in Iraq over the weekend. Was he a brave journalist risking all to get a story? Or was he foolhardy, risking both his and his cameraman's life for nothing? The major media seem to have taken the position that he was doing his job and was cruelly injured. I have read that some people feel that Woodruff was acting irresponsibly by standing up top in a stopped vehicle in an area known for problems of this type. Certainly he was advised that this was not a good idea.
His boss at ABC, a Mr. Westin, declared pompously that the injury to Woodruff and his cameraman "brought the war home to us". What planet have some of these media people been living on? They have been giving us nightly body counts, at times almost breathlessly, complete with sad music and with heart rending pictures or little stories about killed soldiers, their hobbies, likes, pets even, all to make us feel grief for what has happened. I believe most Americans have grieved over the number of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. That being said, it took one of their own people, who was in the minds of many grossly overpaid, and who CHOSE to go to Iraq ( unlike our service people, who do not make much money and did not have much choice in the matter) to "bring it home to them". That would be laughable if it were not so offensive to contemplate. Last night on the ABC network news, a large chunk of the beginning of the program was devoted to covering the incident, and what happened in the aftermath of it. How the two men were immediately taken to a field hospital, from there to the main American hospital in Iraq, from there loaded on a plane and flown to the American hospital in Germany. I often watch the evening news, and never had I seen such coverage about how our service people have received such care. But now, because it is one of their own, they will take the time to show us in depth coverage. We were even "treated" to a brief interview with Woodruff's brother, why, I am not sure, we don't see interviews with the families of most injured servicemen. If I had had a loved one injured in Iraq, I would be livid that all this coverage was for one media star while my loved one and everyone else he'd served with was given short shrift.
I suppose I should not be too surprised by all this coverage, that seems to be the way media reacts when it is one of their own who is injured or killed in one of these war zones. I am sorry, while I feel badly for Mr. Woodruff, the cameraman and their families, my sympathies don't go very far, because the war has long since been "brought home" to me. The foolishness, or hypocrisy, of the media in their coverage of this particular incident has only served to annoy me, and probably to alienate more viewers.