...To learn that Iraq is dangerous and people are being killed!

Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt’s injuries from an improvised explosive device (IED) in Iraq have shocked us all – from his fellow journalists in Iraq to his American audience back home.

I have been seething all weekend about the media coverage of Woodruff/Vogt being attacked and injured. This story has been the lead on all the national news broadcasts every day since it happened. And the guy didn't even die! At least yet.

Sound crass?

Hell no.

Not in the face of nearly 3000 dead America soldiers, countless injured, and who knows exactly how many civilians, enduring tragedy daily while the big media folks get their panty hose all twisted because one of their own, a guy who had the best armor btw, chose to go cover a story in Iraq and was injured.

I know it's human nature. I understand it gets personal when you know someone who is injured or killed. But aren't journalist professionals and don't they realize that their megaphone is just a wee bit larger than the mother of Private 1st Class Brian J. Schoff who was killed in Bagdad on Jan 28th?

Pfc. Brian J. Schoff, 22, of Manchester, Tenn., died in Baghdad, Iraq on Jan. 28, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV. Schoff was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky.

Is the attack on Bob Woodruff and his cameraman any more newsworthy than the numerous soldiers killed daily? We've sometimes gone days with barely a mention of the deaths occurring in Iraq.

To the journalist: Either knock it off with the special coverage of Bob Woodruff or (and more ideally), spend the first five minutes of precious air time on a daily basis covering the details and biography of any number of other people killed in Iraq that day.

Added: This note from Preston Mendenhall anticipating my post:

One last note. Journalists also grieve for the thousands of U.S. troops killed in Iraq. Before someone blogs back that we’re a bunch of self-centered, blow-hards, give us a moment to think of our own.

As usual, the self-centered blow-hards in the media don't get it. It's not that anyone begrudges them to grieve for one of their own. It's subjecting everyone else to their grief disproportionately to that profound grief he proclaims they feel for U.S. troops killed in Iraq. This does make them self-centered blow-hards.

Update: Gilliard has some interesting thoughts on the Woodruff coverage with which I agree. Politically expedient? Yes. Right? No.