No surprise that this morning
Good Morning America was all about
wounded ABC journalists Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt, who were victims of a roadside bomb in Iraq Monday morning. An interesting statistic they also showed was the number of journalist deaths during the current Iraq war (since March 2003) compared to the number of journalist deaths over the entire course of the Vietnam war (1955-1975).
- Iraq War: 79
- Vietnam War: 63
Is it as simple as numerical statistics? Probably not. Perhaps many more journalists are covering the Iraq war. Perhaps they're doing increasingly dangerous reporting. Perhaps not many journalists even went to cover the Vietnam war until the later years. I really don't know. But the numbers are still very striking. Divided out, that's about 26.3 journalist deaths per year for Iraq, compared to 3.1 journalist deaths per year for Vietnam.
This article from September 2005 had slightly different figures:
Iraq: more journalists killed "than during Vietnam war".
If links have expired, please see full texts at wounded ABC journalists and journalist deaths: Iraq vs. Vietnam
1 comment:
Ern-
I was listening to NPR today and they were talking about the dangers journalists face in Iraq. Apparently journalists aren't seen as "third parties." They are actually targeted quite a bit. I guess it sort of gives me more respect for the folks who want to do that sort of thing.
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