CBS: Death in the Morning

30 May 2006 |permalink | email article

It was a rare moment of raw emotion for prime-time television. On Memorial Day a visibly distraught Bob Schieffer struggled to compose himself on the CBS Evening News.

He reported the deaths of two colleagues, a cameraman and a soundman, and the serious wounding of correspondent Kimberly Dozier less than a mile from the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad when their Army unit was attacked.

Victims of a car laden with explosives, the experienced trio, with standard protective gear, had set out to spend a few hours with soldiers to give Americans a glimpse of what this holiday was like far from home. Dozier, who has reported from Iraq for over three years, told colleagues before leaving that she was working on a story about a wounded serviceman who insisted on returning to Iraq.

Schieffer then spoke with the strikingly attractive Lara Logan, 35, CBS’s chief foreign correspondent and the fastest rising star in television from South Africa where she was born. He described her to the WashPo this month as “absolutely fearless, a terrific reporter; she never stops.”

Logan, in her South African voice, was matter-of-fact, emphasizing the serious risks that journalists take in covering this war. She speaks from experience.

Early this month, Logan was embedded with a U.S. military unit in Ramadi when a sniper during an ambush shot the Marine walking just in front of her. She did stand-up moments later even as the gun battle raged. “It was distressing,” she told WashPo. “You have to be a professional. You can’t fall apart in front of the Marines.”

Monday’s attack on the CBS crew, NYT said, has made Iraq the deadliest conflict for reporters in modern times. Since the war began in 2003, 71 journalists have been killed. The number exceeds the 63 killed in Vietnam, the 17 killed in Korea, and even the 69 killed in Word War II, according to Freedom Forum, the nonpartisan advocacy group.

Mesopotamia, now Iraq, has been a graveyard for armies since 330 BC when Alexander the Great conquered it. The British first learned the reality when occupying it in World War I. So it’s tragic so many more American troops will die there in an ill-advised war to sell democracy, with no end in sight; what must inspire us is the journalists brave enough to put themselves in death’s way to tell their stories.

 

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