By Stone Martindale Aug 29, 2007, 16:58 GMT
Katie Couric will embark on a risky reporting trip to Iraq and Syria. it will be the CBS anchor's first time in the war zone.
03/05/2007 - Katie Couric - © Wild1 / Photorazzi
Couric will anchor the "CBS Evening News" from Baghdad next Tuesday and Wednesday, then from Damascus on Thursday and Friday according to CBS.
Couric will travel throughout Iraq, spending most of her time outside of Baghdad. CBS News would not reveal many specifics of her plans in advance because of competitive and safety concerns.
CBS is hoping to be at ground zero in anticipation of the surge progress report by Gen. David Petraeus that is expected the second week of September.
"You can't help but get a very detached perspective when you're not there and you're not witnessing things firsthand," Couric told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "I'm curious about very basic questions regarding living conditions, about how much fear there is in the street, about how the soldiers really are doing."
Couric and her traveling partner, evening news executive producer Rick Kaplan, were fitted with 30-pound body armor vests in Kaplan's office on Tuesday.
CBS News cameraman Paul Douglas and sound-man James Brolan were both killed by a bomb while on assignment in Iraq in May 2006. Correspondent Kimberly Dozier, who was with them, survived but has endured 25 operations in her recovery; Couric anchored a special this spring on the bombing's aftermath. The AP reports the Committee to Protect Journalists said 112 journalists have been killed in Iraq since March 2003.
An additional 41 media workers have been killed, the latest being CBS News Iraqi translator Anwar Abbas Lafta, whose body was found over the weekend in Sadr City.
The AP reports Couric is the second major network anchor to travel to Iraq since ABC News' Bob Woodruff was wounded in a roadside bomb.
NBC's Brian Williams went to Iraq in March; Charles Gibson has not been there yet.
Couric said the trip is about important journalism. "Obviously, if people are interested in what we are doing, that's great, too," she said to the AP.
Your Talkback on this Story