Stories of War Through Many Voices

The New York Times reports: Even for a woman who has been known to jump out of helicopters, this fall has been “particularly crazy,” says Martha Raddatz, the senior foreign affairs correspondent for ABC News.

Raddatz traveled to Afghanistan in late September to cover the approaching 10-year anniversary of America’s longest war (an assignment that required bailing out of a chopper). While there, she reported on the assassination of the terrorist leader Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. Ten days after that trip, she flew to Libya with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for 72 hours, only to learn while traveling home that Muammar el-Qaddafi had been assassinated. The following evening, back in Washington after President Obama announced the withdrawal of all United States troops from Iraq by the end of the year, she ran from studio to studio as a coveted talk show guest to discuss it all.

If there has been a glamour beat in television news in recent years, it may well be war correspondent. Starting with the original “Scud Stud,” Arthur Kent of NBC in the 1991 gulf war, conflict reporters, including the current slate of Richard Engel (NBC), Lara Logan (CBS), and Ms. Raddatz’s ABC colleague Alexander Marquardt, have become news media celebrities not just for acting fearless but for looking fabulous.

Glamour is probably not an adjective at the forefront of Ms. Raddatz’s viewers’ minds. At 58, she is older than most of her on-air competitors, and though she looks great — petite, blond and remarkably put together in the most harrowing of situations — she is generally known less for her on-air presence than for the emotional detail of her reports.

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