Wounded Newsmen Show Slow Recovery
ABC Likely to Use Substitutes for Anchor

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 31, 2006

ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman showed "slow improvement" yesterday at a U.S. military hospital in Germany and remain in serious but stable condition after sustaining head injuries from a roadside bomb in Iraq, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Woodruff and Doug Vogt showed "early signs of reaction" in response to neurological tests at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, said hospital spokeswoman Marie Shaw. Col. Bryan Gamble, the hospital's commander, said both men would have been killed had they not been wearing body armor.

ABC executives, relieved by the modest progress, remain committed to the two-anchor format unveiled this month on "World News Tonight" and will likely name a number of substitutes to work with Elizabeth Vargas while Woodruff recovers.

"It's a body blow," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider, noting the lung cancer death of longtime anchor Peter Jennings last summer. "When you think you've recovered from the tragic news about Peter, you have to deal with another incredibly difficult circumstance. What amazes me is the resilience of the people who work here."

On the "Today" show, former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw said he had spoken to Woodruff's wife, Lee, about the bomb that exploded while her husband and Vogt were standing in the back hatch of an Iraqi military vehicle to tape a report. The vehicle then came under hostile fire from three directions.

Immediately after the blast, Woodruff asked a colleague, "Am I alive?" and then said, "Don't tell Lee." Brokaw said Woodruff "began to cry out in excruciating pain" but was able to walk to a helicopter for medical evacuation.

Doctors were able to reduce Woodruff's brain swelling by removing part of his skullcap but "don't know for sure whether shrapnel penetrated the brain," Brokaw said. He said Woodruff had also suffered a broken collarbone and broken ribs. Both journalists are under heavy sedation, hospital officials said.

ABC correspondent Jim Sciutto said last night he had spoken with Vogt and that the cameraman was joking and in good spirits.

Lee Woodruff and Vogt's wife, Vivian, are now in Germany and were accompanied there by Melanie Bloom, the widow of NBC correspondent David Bloom, who died in Iraq in 2003. Woodruff left Iraq at the time to help comfort his friend's family.

In an interview on "Good Morning America," ABC News President David Westin said Woodruff has "always been the first to volunteer" for difficult assignments such as reporting from the Middle East.

"He knows the risks and knows them very, very well," Westin said. "It's been a dilemma we've struggled with all along. Frankly, we don't get to report as much as we'd like in Iraq because of the security. We have perhaps a false sense that when we're embedded with the U.S. military there's a greater sense of security. In fact, there's nowhere in Iraq that's safe. Bob knew that and understood that."

Vargas, on the same program, noted that she had been in Iraq last month -- embedded with a U.S. military unit for part of the time -- and traveled with the same production crew. "They are not only total pros, but they do not take undue risks," she said.

Woodruff was spending time with Iraqi troops because the question of whether they can assume more of the military burden from U.S. forces "is the big single issue. . . . You can't assess their readiness unless you're traveling with them and observing them do their jobs," Vargas said.

ABC executives and journalists were angry about what they viewed as an insensitive front-page sub-headline in yesterday's New York Times that said, "Field Reports Were a Ratings Strategy."

"That's not why you send someone in harm's way," ABC's Barbara Walters said on her talk show, "The View." "This just drove me crazy."

Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said yesterday that "the subhead was a poor choice of words, and I called David Westin today to express our regrets. We at the Times hurt for Bob Woodruff as we would for one of our own correspondents."

Media analyst Andrew Tyndall said that "you don't drive viewers to your network by reporting on Iraq. I applaud ABC for the way they tried to solve the thorny problem of the dual-anchor format. Do they now throw in the towel on that strategy? Do they turn Vargas into a news reader and abandon on-the-road reporting for six months until we find out whether Woodruff can come back?" ABC said it has no such plans, in part because its new approach of providing live West Coast newscasts requires an anchor to remain on duty until 10 p.m. Eastern time every night.

Some online critics have questioned whether the media are devoting too much attention to two wounded journalists when such injuries are all too common in Iraq.

"Look, it is a tragedy whenever this happens to anybody there -- soldiers, contractors or journalists," ABC's Schneider said. "When it happens to someone we know and love, it's particularly devastating."

Landstuhl is the U.S. military's largest overseas hospital and usually the first stop for U.S. forces severely wounded in Iraq. Most patients stay at the Army-run hospital for 48 to 72 hours before being transported to medical clinics in the United States. ABC says Woodruff and Vogt may be able to return to the United States as early as today.

Woodruff's brother, David, told ABC from Landstuhl: "The doctors have been communicating with us all the time. The care he got in the field -- he was taken into the Balad field hospital within just about 30 minutes. . . . The actions that they took saved his life, no question about it."

Staff writer Craig Whitlock in Germany contributed to this report.