For CWA Journalists, Fears are Personal

For many members of CWA's media sectors, the journalists risking their lives in Iraq are friends and colleagues. Some are also CWA brothers and sisters. Jim Joyce, vice president of NABET-CWA as well as vice president of NABET Local 51016 in New York City, writes below about a good friend's critical injury and another's close call.

By Jim Joyce

The news on the morning of January 29, 2006 that ABC World News Tonight co-anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt had been seriously injured in Iraq while covering a story, hit particularly hard for me. In addition to being a colleague of Bob Woodruff at ABC, he and I have been friends for over 26 years, ever since he and I were fraternity brothers at Colgate University.

Woodruff and Vogt's ordeal shined a new spotlight on the dangers faced by professional news gatherers, many of whom are NABET-CWA and TNG-CWA members, as they work to bring the complete news of the war back to readers and viewers throughout the United States and Canada.

Unfortunately, these occurrences of working journalists being shot at, wounded, or quite honestly murdered, have become all too common since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan started.

In 2005, another colleague and NABET-CWA Local 51016 brother, Joe Tesauro, a news cameraman for WABC-TV in New York City, found himself and reporter Jim Dolan in the middle of an ambush while embedded with a military unit in Iraq.

Joe recounted that experience to me. "Everything happens so fast. You aren't thinking about the bullets, the adrenaline is pumping and you're thinking, I've got a vest and a helmet on...I'll be okay to get the (video) shot."

So the next time you are watching television or reading newspaper coverage of the shooting war in Iraq, remember that it might just be a NABET-CWA or TNG-CWA member putting his life on the line to bring the full and true story home.