"I just got blown up--here's Tom with the weather."

Almost every news item covering the condition of wounded ABC personnel Bob Woodruff and Doug Vogt either does not mention Vogt at all in the headline or lede, uses neutral language but only shows pictures of Woodruff, or refers to Vogt simply as "Woodruff's cameraman," "an ABC anchor and his cameraman," etc. Somehow I doubt that this is a simple case of celebrity recognizability (but perhaps as the story develops and becomes more well known Vogt's name will become more prevalent too). Right now, however, these trends seem to speak to an interesting class-cultural pattern. News readers are shocked by the idea of that smiling face on television being no less immune to violence than the Iraqi people, who are "natural" victims, while simultaneously engaging in the schadenfreude of seeing beauty brought low. Or to get all Baudrillard on yo ass, our simulacra are elevated to the level of untouchable fetish, but we also want them to suffer for our sins. The unphotogenic cameraman/apparatus figure remains on "our" level, the plane of everyday--Iraqi--suffering, and so isn't as jarring.