TV war reporters gain celebrity status

In the cramped, dimly lit belly of the armored vehicle, Walter Rodgers' eyes seemed to glow through the dark last week as he reported the macabre scene around him on the road to Baghdad: Iraqi corpses strewn all around as rounds from American tanks tore into the sand dunes, blasting stragglers to pieces. As his video-phone transmission jumped to and fro from the cannon concussions, Rodgers ended his story with a chilling observation: "Virtually every single one of the Iraqi soldiers was carrying a gas mask."\nA veteran of more than 30 years in broadcasting, CNN's Rodgers is hardly a new face. His graying hair and rounded 62-year-old body make him an unlikely pinup boy. But when people try to pick The New Scud Stud -- the TV star of the war in Iraq -- the dramatic intensity of Rodgers' reports over the past three weeks as he travels with the 3rd Infantry Division put him near the top of everybody's list.\nAnd lots of lists there are. New technology that allows live broadcasts from the front lines, coupled with the Pentagon's willingness to allow reporters to accompany troops into the thick of battle, has made this generation of television war reporters instant celebrities, as much Tom Hanks as Ernie Pyle.\n"Oh, everybody wants to know who The New Scud Stud is," says Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist who studies the news media. "It's a national parlor game."\nSome television journalists find the game a distasteful trivialization of their work, especially when the war has killed at least eight newsmen so far. NBC refused to even forward their reporters a questionnaire from People magazine asking if they carried favorite stuffed animals into the war zone.\nOthers think it's simply bizarre. Fox News' Jennifer Eccleston was stunned when her parents in New York sent her stories calling her "the Scud Studette" and "Miss Shock And Awe 2003."\n"This comes as a complete and utter shock to me," Eccleston said via satellite phone from Jordan, where she's spent the past three weeks monitoring events in Baghdad as well as regional political unrest. "At the end of the day, I hope this is more about the fairness and accuracy of my reporting than about my hairstyle."\nArthur Kent knows the feeling. The original Scud Stud, he got the label after a live broadcast from Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War. "Hello, New York! They're firing Patriots!" Kent shouted on-camera as U.S. Patriot missiles blasted off to intercept incoming Iraqi Scud missiles. "This is not a drill ... We're under attack here!"\n"At the time, it was a terrific kick, it was a laugh," Kent said from London, where he's been covering the diplomatic side of the war for Canada's MacLeans magazine. The nickname and the reputation accompanying it helped him get more air time and didn't hurt with the ladies, either. But, Kent is quick to add: "It wasn't just because of my hair and my leather jacket that people took notice. It was because I tried hard to be a good reporter under difficult circumstances."\nBut if good journalism alone created stars, city hall reporters all over America would be signing movie deals. Drama and exposure also play major roles, which is why wars -- with their round-the-clock coverage to a backdrop of explosions and gunfire -- can jump-start careers.\nAnd not just for journalists, either. Colin Powell was a career Army officer unknown outside of the Pentagon before his televised briefings during the invasion of Panama catapulted him to fame and presidential cabinets. The same could happen to Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, whose chiseled face and dry wit have made briefings from the U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar must-see TV in many American living rooms.\n"The general is definitely registering on the hunk scale," notes Robert Thompson head of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "A lot of people are paying attention to him, and not just to what he says."\nThere are also budding stars back in the studio, from Univision's hunky anchor Jorge Ramos to CNN military analyst Gen. Wesley Clark, whose willingness to criticize U.S. military strategy has won him enemies in the White House and fans on Internet message boards. But ultimately, The New Scud Stud will be drawn from the ranks of reporters dodging bullets and eating sand out in the field. "The really good reporters are people like (Pentagon correspondents) David Martin of CBS and Jim Miklaszewski of NBC," argues the University of Virginia's Sabato. "They know what they're talking about and how to get it across quickly and they have the sources to find out what happened.\n"But they're not going to become Scud Studs. It's guys riding around on the back of tanks. That's romantic and sexy -- and most of them are young and handsome. They tend to look the part."\nGood looks are an unavoidable, if not necessarily all-important, part of any equation for success in television, agrees University of Southern California journalism Professor Cinny Kennard, a former CBS correspondent: "It's the character of the medium, it's pictures and sound." That's only amplified by the drama of war coverage, she says.\nBut, Kennard adds, being a Scud Stud doesn't necessarily mean a reporter is empty-headed. "The original Stud Scud was probably Edward R. Murrow, covering the London blitz for CBS radio," she argues, citing one of the pioneers of broadcast news. "Does anybody mind being compared to Edward R. Murrow?"\nScud Stud candidates themselves, not surprisingly, take issue with any implication that they're intellectual cupcakes or journalistic career climbers. Says NBC's Kerry Sanders, traveling with the 8th Marine Division near Baghdad: "This is not about Kerry Sanders ... I'm just here trying to tell the story of why Americans are here and what they're doing."\nCNN's Nic Roberts, who earned Scud Stud candidacy on the first night of the war when he reported from Baghdad as bombs knocked plaster onto his head, points out that he was also in the city during the Gulf War as CNN's satellite engineer, a job in which he faced just as much danger but never appeared on the air.\n"My wanting to be there has nothing to do with being a star," says Roberts, who was expelled from Baghdad shortly after the war began and is now reporting from Jordan. "It's the same reason I wanted to be there as an engineer in 1991 -- it's the story; it's history"