popular thinking

FOLLOW THE ANCHOR

We can discuss the New York Times subhed from today if you'd like, which called the roadside bombing of a military vehicle transporting ABC anchor Bob Woodruff the "latest blow to network," but the bigger issue is how TV continues to show how it has struggled to cover the war in Iraq. All of these broadcasts, from other networks to local affiliates and the cable news networks, are giving so much airtime to the condition of Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt because they're part of the TV community. It makes it more newsworthy to them. ABC has gone so far as to make Woodruff and Vogt the top story Sunday and Monday, tonight giving it eight minutes of coverage before turning to the latest terrorist videos. This was the top ABC News story at this writing. For them, of course, it's more personal. But TV has such a difficult time holding an audience's attention on Iraq that this latest attack gives them a reason to put more emphasis on what's going on over there, reinforcing the difficulties of U.S. troops to deal with insurgent attacks, roadside bombs and the lack of a clear light at the end of the tunnel. Then again, the same ABC News story linked above fails to say anything about a) whether anyone in the military convoy also was injured, or b) whether the video Vogt was recording at the time of the attack will ever see the light of day. Instead, they reconstruct the incident here, giving the sense that troops might get hurt, but focusing solely on what happened to Woodruff and Vogt. And there has been plenty of melodramatic footage, too, by ABC and other networks showing footage of Woodruff's kids, and playing up the friendships between the Woodruffs and the family of David Bloom, an NBC reporter who died in Iraq -- though not in combat. For anyone connected to the Woodruffs or the Vogts, this is a difficult time. But the same can be said for the thousands of American families dealing with dead or injured soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of other families still worrying about their sons and daughters. Do we really need to have a network anchor injured to remember Iraq? Watching TV this week, you'd think the answer is yes.

And the entertainment advertorial shows...why are they weighing in on this at all? Do I need to see Access Hollywood or CNN's Showbiz Tonight talking about this? Why in the world are we asking celebrities at the Screen Actors Guild Awards what they think about the injuries to Woodruff and Vogt? It reeks of the same lazy knee-jerk reaction after Hurricane Katrina, when we devoted air time to celebrities telling us how the images from New Orleans impacted them, as if that was the important thing to focus on. Ugh.