War correspondents face death in combat

For most journalists, the objective is simple -- get an assignment and report what happens. However, for those who cover conflicts overseas, this task is not quite as simple.\nLast week, ABC anchorman Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were critically injured by a roadside bomb while on assignment with an Iraqi convoy. In that same area, Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll is still being held hostage after being kidnapped a little more than a month ago by Iraqi terrorists.\nIU journalism professor Steve Raymer, a former National Geographic photographer, has seen more than 14 wars firsthand. \n"Many journalists have been killed over the years in combat -- bullets, bombs, land mines," Raymer said. "I've also been in the middle of combat in Vietnam and Cambodia in South East Asia and in El Salvador in Central America, and took photographs of the wounded, dying and dead."\nDespite being constantly surrounded by chaos and death for so long, Raymer still justifies the need for journalists to cover these dangerous events. \n"The bottom line is that most of the time our job is to bear witness -- to be society's professional eyewitness and to capture as many truth moments as humanly possible," he said.\nHowever, he said the conflict in Iraq is a very different kind of war, since journalists are now being directly targeted.\n"Journalists are seen as fair game by combatants," Raymer said. "Every time a journalist sets foot outside a bullet-proof SUV to do an interview, he or she is a target."\n2005 was a record-breaking year for on-site deaths of journalists, according to a Reuters and International Federation of Journalists report. The study showed there were at least 150 media-related deaths last year, and 89 were murders directly related to the journalist's professional work. \nDespite the ever-present danger that seems to be growing on the newsgathering frontlines, IU journalism professor Owen Johnson said most journalists are very much aware of the threat they face. \n"Anyone who reports from a war zone is cognizant of the reality that the chances of dying there are significantly higher than in peacetime," he said.\nRaymer added that despite spending more time covering a conflict, the risks and distress journalists face do not diminish.\n"Only a fool doesn't feel scared," he said. "The trick is to stay focused and make fear work for you."\nDanger in the media industry is nothing new. Though the rates are now especially high, risk has always come with the territory of covering conflicts abroad. \nIU journalism professor Mary Elizabeth Grabe covered the apartheid crisis in South Africa during the '80s. Grabe said she faced numerous threats while covering the riots, including having her phone tapped. \n"First we traveled in vans, then camouflage, then nothing," Grabe said. She added that along with her cameraman, she often was forced to take cover in houses of friendly locals. \nEven as far back as World War II, reporters have been included among a conflict's casualties. Ernie Pyle, an IU alumnus and namesake of the IU School of Journalism, was a foreign correspondent who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the war. Reinforcing the grave risks that journalists put themselves in, he was shot and killed by enemy gunfire on the Japanese island of Okinawa while reporting one of the final major battles of the war. \nWhile both World War II and the current conflict in Iraq are similar in their risks to journalists, Johnson said now the main difference and struggle for reporters is the fight is not against a clear enemy but instead against a concept.