Reporters, Scientists and Authors, Under Fire

"Embedded reporters," a defining practice of the ongoing war in Iraq, took a very personal turn over the weekend when ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt (today's two burstiest people) were seriously injured in a roadside bomb explosion (today's 10th-most-cited news story) while on patrol with Iraqi troops near Bagdhad. The Moderate Voice blogger provides perpsective about the dangers of journalism and Woodruff's friendship with the late reporter David Bloomfield, a print reporter who died of a lung blood clot in 2003 in Iraq.

Muzzling scientists?
So over the weekend, my husband and I decided to take a mid-winter January walk through downtown Cincinnati, supposedly the coldest winter month. We saw: outdoor market vendors selling wares in 60-degree weather, people picnicking in parks, teens lobbing Frisbees in T-shirts and a line out the door at an ice cream parlor. So why is the Bush Administration trying to stifle the scientific opinions of NASA scientist and global warming expert Dr. James Hansen (No. 8 among the day's bursty people and the subject of the day's most-cited news story). Ambivablog sees bureaucratic danger ahead, Will Robinson. Only in New Mexico sees shades of Big Brother, while Kaseido lumps the latest saga into the ongoing Bush war on reality. A BlogPulse trend graph shows a definite spike in interest about global warming during the 2004 hurricane season:



BlogPulse on Dateline: BlogPulse is a regular data contributor to NBC's "Dateline," and Josh Mankiewicz' Sunday Mank Blog looks at what bloggers buzzed about last week...namely, Oprah Winfrey's truth take-down of A Million Little Pieces author James Frey.