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November 28, 2007 4:07 PM

War Coverage: Grim But Realistic

(AP Photo/Bassem Daham)
Of all the words you could use to describe the reporting from Iraq, you could go through a bunch before you’d get to “too rosy.”

But a new Project for Excellence in Journalism survey of American reporters covering Iraq says that correspondents over there overwhelmingly believe the picture being painted for us here is accurate – with some even thinking it, yes, “too rosy.”

According to the Reuters story:
Nearly 90 percent of U.S. journalists in Iraq say much of Baghdad is still too dangerous to visit, despite a recent drop in violence attributed to the build-up of U.S. forces, a poll released on Wednesday said.

The survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center showed that many U.S. journalists believe coverage has painted too rosy a picture of the conflict…

"Eight in 10 journalists believe conditions have deteriorated for reporters since their own first posting in the country," the survey's authors said.
Before going any further, it’s critical to note that the actual percentage of the respondents who consider the coverage unrealistically positive was 15 percent, with 70 percent saying that the coverage, while admittedly negative, is accurate.

But much of the study’s other findings are jarring and disturbing.

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Tags:
Project for Excellence in Journalism ,
Kimberly Dozier
Topics:
In The News
November 19, 2007 1:29 PM

In the Line of Fire

(CBS/AP)
David Bloom. Michael Kelly. Kimberly Dozier. Bob Woodruff.

Anwar Abbas Lafta.

The first four are well-documented and oft-discussed American media casualties of our military engagement in Iraq, regularly cited as examples of the dangers of reporting from the front.

But the last was an Iraqi who served as a translator for CBS News in Baghdad before he was kidnapped and killed. His name and commitment and spirit were discussed for just a few days after his death. But it is Lafta’s fate that is far more common, while also being far less known.

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Tags:
David Bloom ,
Michael Kelly ,
Kimberly Dozier ,
Bob Woodruff ,
Anwar Abbas Lafta
Topics:
In The News
May 25, 2007 3:05 PM

Kimberly Dozier, Back On The Job

(CBS)
On Tuesday night, CBS will air a one hour special called "Flashpoint," about the aftermath of a roadside bomb that exploded in Iraq last May. CBS News' James Brolan and Paul Douglas were killed in the attack, as well as Army Capt. James Alex Funkhouser and his Iraqi translator. Correspondent Kimberly Dozier was severely injured but managed to survive, and after dozens of operations and months of recovery she is now back to work. We spoke with her today.

Brian Montopoli: How are you feeling?

Kimberly Dozier: Feeling great when you think about where I was almost a year ago. I am back to walking, back to running, back to doing just about everything that I used to do. Except for a couple of really complicated yoga poses that require half knee bend. You know, I can't do half lotus right now. But that's about it.

Brian Montopoli: Do you have a different perspective on journalism as a result of what you went through? Are you approaching stories differently?

Kimberly Dozier: Well, I've done about five stories in the past couple weeks. One for "Sunday Morning" on female combat amputees, and a series for the "Evening News." Because of the subject matter, because I chose things that I'd seen and lived through and reported on just by living through them, I haven't had a real test in the field yet on a different subject.

For these particular stories, I empathize so much with everyone involved. That's part of the reason I want to tell the stories...one was extremity war injuries. The reason I'm doing the story is because that's what I've got. Blast injuries to my arms and legs. And I had no idea that about 82 percent of American troops, most of the injured troops coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan, have these sorts of injuries. And these injuries are presenting bizarre medical mysteries that doctors really don't know how best to treat.

Now in my case, it meant a number of debates. When everyone thought I was doing well and on the road to recovery at Bethesda Naval, actually every week there was some new nightmare, some new horror that would appear that required me, us as a family, to decide which option we wanted to take. Because they don't know. I had Acinetobacter, an Iraqi bacteria, it's also prevalent throughout the Middle East and Europe. Normally innocuous. But you blast it into a body that's compromised, that's immune compromised because of the trauma it's going through, and all of a sudden it flourishes, and it flourishes to the point that it can kill you.

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Tags:
kimberly dozier ,
flashpoint
Topics:
The Public Eye Chat
May 4, 2007 1:15 PM

Dozier Tells Her Story

(CBS)
In Glamour – and I think it's safe to say this is the first time we've linked over there – CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier has told the story of the Baghdad attack that left her critically injured and killed colleagues Paul Douglas and James Brolan.

"Over the years, my colleagues and I had constantly debated the risks of our jobs, but felt that they were worth taking to bring the public’s attention to whatever the crisis was, wherever it was… this was the day all of our instincts let us down," she writes.

Continues Dozier: "We were filming a routine patrol led by [U.S. Army Captain James] Funkhouser, an upbeat Texan well liked by his troops. [Funkhouser was killed in the attack.] At the patrol’s first stop, we got out of our Humvees to trail him down a mostly empty street. Suddenly I was slammed into blackness as the air filled with a smell like fireworks. Later I learned that a bomb-packed car, just waiting for a U.S. patrol, had been detonated as we passed. I wound up lying on the pavement, shocked into numbness. I dimly remember the popping sound of bullets—exploding ammo from a Humvee ignited by the bomb. But with both eardrums blown out, I didn’t hear much else."

Read the whole thing over at Glamour. On May 29, CBS is airing a documentary called "Flashpoint: Kimberly Dozier and the Army's Fourth ID -- A Story of Bravery, Recovery and Lives Forever Changed." More on that here.
Tags:
kimberly dozier ,
glamour
Topics:
CBS News Issues
March 9, 2007 12:54 PM

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Tags:
dozier ,
iraq
Topics:
Media Issues
December 21, 2006 1:52 PM

Across The Media Universe

(CBS)
'Emerging From A Nightmare': CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier has written a reflection six months after the attack in Iraq that injured her and killed her colleagues Paul Douglas and James Brolan. Also killed were 4th Infantry Division Capt. James Funkhouser and his Iraqi translator.

"The U.S. military treated me as one of its own, saving my life a few times over, with the best people, the best training and the best equipment. I was blessed time and again on my particular journey, with daily encounters with extraordinary people who helped put my body, and in some instances, my spirit, back together again," Dozier writes. "But the U.S.-led coalition cannot scoop up every bomb victim, and whisk them across the globe like they did me. I watch the near-daily video of Iraqi bombing victims, and study them as their crying family members drag them from the scene, or cradle them on a hospital floor, begging for a doctor. I see where the shrapnel ripped into their bodies, and think to myself: 'Dear God. Those wounds are like mine. In an Iraqi hospital…they won't survive the night.'"

'You' Edge Out A Holocaust Denier: Had the Time Magazine "Person of the Year" not been "You," it would have been Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to Stephen Koepp, Time's deputy managing editor. Other rejected candidates: That dude you know, that woman over there with the thing, Donald Trump.

Shooting Shooting: The Los Angeles Times, in a discussion of "YouTube Journalism," brings attention to one of the most jarring videos the site has ever offered. It is, allegedly, a scene from the border of Tibet and Nepal. A video shows a group of what appear to be Tibetan pilgrims on their way to visit the Dalai Lama. And they are being shot – "like dogs," according to a voiceover – by Chinese soldiers. The video is here.

Writes Moisés Naím: "Fifteen years ago, the world marveled at the 'CNN effect' and believed that the unblinking eyes of TV cameras, beyond the reach of censors, would bring greater global accountability. These expectations were, to some degree, fulfilled. Since the early 1990s, electoral frauds have been exposed, democratic uprisings energized, famines contained and wars started or stopped thanks to the CNN effect. But the YouTube effect will be even more powerful..."

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Tags:
kimberly dozier
Topics:
Across The Media Universe
August 3, 2006 11:55 AM

Dozier Leaving Hospital, Updates Her Recovery Efforts

(CBS)
We’ve gotten quite a few e-mails over the past several weeks asking for an update on CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier, who was severely wounded in a roadside bomb attack that also took the lives of fellow CBS crew members Paul Douglas and James Brolan. We have felt that Kimberly’s recovery is a private matter and continues to be so but when we get the opportunity, we’ll pass along updates. Today, Dozier sent the following message colleagues at CBS News:
“Folks, I’m leaving hospitals behind, ahead of the deadline, or at least ahead of schedule. I’ve had a couple setbacks, and I still face a couple minor surgeries, but overall, the prognosis is far better than the docs had hoped just after I’d reached Germany. The teams at Balad, Landstuhl, and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. worked overtime – something like a dozen surgeries at least, including one that lasted 11 hours.

“Just a few weeks later, I’m up on crutches and can even manage with a cane. It’s not pretty, but I’m walking on my own – and that, I also owe, to some hard-driving therapists at Kernan Hospital in Maryland, who kept saying, ‘Now try this…’

“The next step: continued outpatient rehab to get my body used to being in motion full-time.

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Tags:
Dozier
Topics:
CBS News Issues
June 6, 2006 3:52 PM

CBS News Personnel Reflect On Covering The Attack On Their Own

(CBS)
It's now been eight days since the roadside bomb attack in Baghdad that killed CBS News cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan and critically injured correspondent Kimberly Dozier. The attack also took the lives of Army Capt. James Funkhouser and an Iraqi interpreter.

Covering news involving your own people is a unique challenge for a news organization, particularly when the news is tragic.

"This is what journalism is all about," says "Evening News" anchor Bob Schieffer. "We are trained to deal with tough stories. It's always harder when it involves someone you know, but you always have to fall back on your training."

"I think the basic issue is finding the right balance between covering the incident which in essence happened to involve our people…and balancing that with the fact that there are a lot of other people who this has happened to," says CBS News Vice President Paul Friedman.

CBS' coverage, says "Evening News" Executive Producer Rome Hartman, had to reflect the fact that "this is the kind of terrible news that thousands of families have received, and this time it was our family. It's no more serious or awful or tragic than what other families have experienced, but also no less so." He adds that when people at CBS first heard the news, "our first instinct was compassionate, not journalistic."

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Tags:
Kimberly Dozier ,
Bob Schieffer ,
Rome Hartman ,
Sandy Genelius ,
Paul Friedman
Topics:
CBS News Issues
June 5, 2006 11:26 AM

"You Take All The Precautions That You Can, And You’re Never Safe."

(CBS/AP)
Amid a growing amount of attention to the risks reporters are taking in Iraq following the deaths of CBS News cameraman Paul Douglas and sound technician James Brolan and the injury of CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier, Broadcasting & Cable solicited some thoughts from several television reporters who have been covering the conflict. Their reflections offer a closer look at some of the day to day challenges of reporting in Iraq and address much of the criticism of mainstream coverage of the war that has come up in recent months. Clark Bentson, an ABC News producer who has served in the rotating position of Baghdad Bureau Chief and now spends four months a year in Iraq, had this to say about the considerations that must be made in the face of inherent risks:
I’d never go, or ask anyone else to go, to Fallujah or Ramadiyah without the U.S. military. We had a freelance cameraman a year ago killed in Fallujah, shot by U.S. military that didn’t understand what he was doing there. I helped organize and was here when Bob Woodruff was here and worked with the 4th Infantry Division to set that up, and we all know what happened there. You take all the precautions that you can, and you’re never safe. It is absolutely Russian roulette every time someone leaves the compound, and you have to make the decision if that interview or picture is really worth it. [Since ABC’s Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were injured], every time we embed with the military now has to be approved [by ABC News executives]. Our management team who are not in the field now have a better understanding of the risks we take.

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Tags:
dozier ,
brolan ,
douglas ,
iraq ,
broadcasting and cable
Topics:
Media Issues
May 30, 2006 11:04 AM

The Numbers And What's Behind Them

(CBS/U.S. Army)
Estimating the numbers of people killed in any war is an inexact science. But the deaths of CBS News cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan, who were killed by a car bomb while accompanying a military patrol in Baghdad, along with a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter, may represent a milestone.

According to Ann Cooper of the Committee To Protect Journalists, 71 journalists and 26 support staffers have been killed in the Iraq war. "That number [71] is more than the 63 killed in Vietnam, the 17 killed in Korea, and even the 69 killed in World War II, according to Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan free speech advocacy group," notes the New York Times. The Times thus determines that, at least by some estimates, "the death of two journalists working for CBS News on Monday firmly secured the Iraq war as the deadliest conflict for reporters in modern times."

It's important to note that while an estimated 71 journalists have been killed in the war, more than 2,450 American soldiers have died. More than 200 foreign military personnel have been killed. There have been, according to estimates, more than 4,700 Iraqi police and military casualties, and an unknown but certainly significant number of Iraq civilians killed.

Some commenters have complained that CBS News has given too much coverage to its own personnel at the expense of coverage of soldiers. Certainly, their deaths are just two among many, and the tragedy one of countless that have occurred in this war. Douglas and Brolin, along with injured colleague Kimberly Dozier, risked their lives telling the stories of these tragedies, as well as other stories of the war. When they were killed, they were working on a story about how Memorial Day is a day just like any other for American troops.

While there is value in considering the figures, they can never really tell the story of a war. I think Bob Schieffer did a nice job articulating what many at CBS News are feeling last night when he said that "days like today are reminders that this is not about numbers -- each of those numbers is a person, a person that others know or love or depend on."

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Tags:
Paul Douglas ,
James Brolan ,
Kimberly Dozier
Topics:
CBS News Issues

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