Ted Rall: Embedded Reporters Endanger Their Ideals and Their Peers

CHICAGO--Anchorman Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt are the latest casualties of a most dangerous trend: journalists playing soldier. The two ABC News staffers, riding along with collaborationist Iraqi troops in a U.S. military convoy, were struck in the head by flying shrapnel from a bomb detonated by the resistance near Taji, about 25 miles northwest of Baghdad.

"The Pentagon takes every opportunity to say, 'If you're worried about security, travel embedded with us,' Ann Cooper, director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), told The Washington Post. But embedding isn't just a threat to journalistic objectivity. It's the most foolhardy way to cover a war, and it ought to be prohibited.