Risky Business

"Once it's in your blood, the difference in being on the scene firsthand is dramatic compared to being back at a desk at headquarters," said Donatella Lorch, a former foreign correspondent for NBC and the New York Times. But, she said, "the danger that journalists face in Iraq is really unparalleled. These roadside bombs make you a target regardless of whether you're in the vehicle that's blown up."

Woodruff's injury, following the Jan. 7 kidnapping of Christian Science Monitor stringer Jill Carroll, whose fate remains unknown, underscores the perils for western reporters in Iraq. Sixty-one journalists have been killed in that country since the 2003 war began, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and there have been numerous close calls.

"Personally I feel probably more nervous if I'm driving along in a Humvee, armored or not, because a U.S. convoy or a military convoy of any kind in this country is such a target," CNN correspondent Michael Holmes said from Baghdad yesterday. His car was shot at in a 2004 attacks in which his cameraman was shot in the head and two Iraqi staffers were killed.

"When it happens right on top of you and you are the target, it's very hard to get across the sheer violence of something like that, and terror," Holmes said. "You know, I'm not afraid to admit that. It's an intensely personal and horrific experience."

At ABC News, where the loss of Jennings is still acutely felt, feelings of shock and concern yesterday were tempered by cautious optimism when Woodruff and Vogt were pronounced in stable condition after surgery. Vargas underwent a separate trauma when her husband, singer Marc Cohn, was shot in the head last summer during a carjacking, though he has since recovered.

While media attention to the Iraq conflict has ebbed and flowed as constant casualties have become a fact of life, the spotlight has shined brighter during periodic visits by high-profile anchors.

"It's more and more critical to have your person on the ground," said Lorch, who now runs the Knight International Press Fellowships Program. "The American audience sees news through a person. They identify with the anchor or correspondent they see every night."

On CBS's "Face the Nation," anchor Bob Schieffer praised Woodruff's bravery, saying: "Wars are not fought on the training ground, nor can they be covered from a TV studio. They are not reality shows, they are reality. Young men and women have to fight them and correspondents have to cover them if we are to understand what they are about."

Broadcasting & Cable has some background on Doug Vogt.

Along these lines, I was really struck by this piece by the LAT's Alissa Rubin:

"The truth is that we are working in a war zone where no rules apply. No one is safe: not Iraqis, not Westerners, not men, not women. For most journalists in Iraq, it's hard to be honest about danger, even though we talk about it all the time. We follow daily reports about the number of roadside bombings, suicide attacks and abductions. We chart violence the way other people watch the weather. But talking about the danger in Iraq for what it is -- my life, my death -- is too scary. So we make it ordinary. 'Oh, did you see any gunmen on your way over, there were some at the intersection yesterday, and would you like a cup of coffee?'

"To family and friends not in Iraq, it is incomprehensible why you came here, and certainly why you returned twice, three times -- in my case, over and over for nearly three years. I could say something like 'The cycle of risk and survival makes life more valuable,' but that wouldn't be true, although some journalists do become addicted to the danger, to the high of sidestepping death.