Harping on the media: Bob Woodruff's story

It's to be expected, but discouraging nevertheless, to see some of the reaction to Bob Woodruff's report the other night on ABC, To Iraq and Back.

I hadn't planned to watch the show but was hooked within a minute. It was a horrifying tale of his own injury in Iraq and his recovery, but most of the program was devoted to U.S. military veterans suffering from the same terrible brain injuries. Many of them aren't as lucky as Woodruff and their families will struggle for a lifetime.

Even so, the naysayers can't be quiet about this. One commenter to Hal Boedeker's good column on the program and reaction to it says "To bad the guys on the firing line daily aren't fawned over as the media do over one of their own. How typical!"

The All Spin Zone reports on what Rush Limbaugh had to say, including: "But we do not get stories of valor in the Drive-By Media about soldiers. We do not get too many profiles of the seriously injured and their recovery and the great strides they make."

I guess those folks didn't even watch the program. And I guess they didn't know Woodruff and his family have set up a fund to help other brain-injury victims.
The full documentary is available here.

Part of All Spin Zone's comment on the documentary:

As a nation, we simply can’t allow this to continue. With a short 60 minute return to broadcast television, Bob Woodruff has (or will), become as much of a “face” for Traumatic Brain Injury as is Michael J. Fox for Parkinson’s Disease. And that’s a good thing - because the Bush regime has done their level best to hide the national shame of the tens of thousands of severely wounded men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

And note the 2006 U.S. Senate vote linked at the bottom: to deny funds for research that would help diagnose brain trauma injury.....