For those who report

Famous journalist and IU namesake Ernie Pyle once said, "For me war has become a flat, black depression without highlights, revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit." \nPyle, who will forever be known as one of the first wartime journalists, lost his life April 17, 1945, just one year after he won the Pulitzer Prize, while on patrol with U.S. troops in Okinawa. Moving ahead 60 years, this is not a column debating whether the war is good. This column instead concerns itself with some surprising people who are directly involved in it. The name Jill Carroll has appeared in the news quite frequently throughout the last couple of weeks. Carroll is currently known as the latest U.S. citizen kidnapped by a terrorist group in Iraq, this time by one known as the "Brigades of Vengeance." She, like Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Pearl, who was gruesomely killed in Pakistan in 2002, is a journalist.\nAccording to the Committee to Protect Journalists, there have been close to 3,000 media personalities who made their way to Iraq since the war officially began in March 2003. Sixty journalists have died in just the last two years in Iraq. By comparison, during the whole course of the Vietnam War, only 66 reporters died. \nAs a journalism major, I am often reminded in my classes that the changing landscape of war has made my intended profession an exhilarating, yet dangerous opportunity. Since 2001 -- when the, War on Terror really began, reporters like Carroll (who is not an "embedded" reporter), who writes for the Christian Science Monitor, have been out on the streets of Baghdad and Kabul to get the news and facts back home so people like you and I can understand what the hell is going on over there. While obviously not on the same level as the men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, I feel that the journalists, contractors, construction workers and other foreign civilians trying to modernize and improve Iraq should also be commended and worried about. \nWhile Pyle's quote discusses the utter fear and terror that wartime journalism offers, public and civic interest in this war is ever-rising. A few weeks before Carroll's abduction, a lot of media attention was centered on Farris Hassan, a 16-year-old kid from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., of Iraqi descent who went to Iraq, alone, during his school's winter break to see what the war was really like. He never told his parents about his planned trip. It is said that he is an aspiring journalist. In the future, if there is another war, there will be a strong possibility that he will be sent overseas to revisit the Middle East. Hey, it comes with the territory doesn't it, Mr. Pyle?