Embedding, No Silver Bullet

I've been one of the people making the argument that if reporters have felt unsafe leaving the Green Zone in Iraq, that embedding with the military more often is one solution.

But clearly that isn't a "silver bullet," a way to guarantee people's saftey, as was made clear today when it was announced that ABC co-anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman have been seriously injured in Iraq. (Why the hell doesn't ABC have something more than a wire story on their web site?)

Ironically, this morning this long story about Woodruff and his co-anchor appeared in the Post.

As I've noted before, I fully understand that I'm making two arguments that are in direct tension with one another, asking for reporters to get out and about more, and simultaneously strenuously asserting that no story is worth a life. Which is why, as I've also noted before, the way to resolve that tension is more transparency in the final reporting on what limits there were on any given story.

In the meantime, this is terrible news, so take a minute and do, well, whatever it is you do. Think a good thought, say a prayer, light a candle.

Update: ABC provides on-air updates at the start of "This Week." It is not entirely accurate that they were embedded with the 4ID. That American unit is training Iraqis, and they were with the Iraqi forces in the convoy, meaning they were not in a vehicle that was fully armored. (A back-handed way of saying American vehicles are armored.) They were not in a pick-up, but were riding in the hatch of whatever vehicle they were in, so despite helmets and body armor, were exposed.

Yet more credit to ABC: they were injured attempting to cover the most underreported and most important story of the war -- the quality of Iraqi troops and the progress their training is making.