Horrible. Earlier in the week Michael Kelly, Editor-at-Large for the Atlantic Monthly, was killed. Two big names. I think around 10 media people have died in this war. Perhaps lives are more important thatn "cool coverage"?
I was listening to the report about somewhere between 5 and 7 this morning and thought about starting a thread on this, but wondered how many people would even know who he was. I was shocked. I've been glued to CNN and MSNBC throughout the war and always laughed when I saw Bloom bouncing along through the desert. I always thought "man, that dude's working his butt off and he's basically in the lead attack". Truly sad.
David Bloom has been one of my favorite reporters ever since the 2000 election. He just seemed like an awesome guy. They showed old footage of him hunting down a looter during a hurricane in Miami (can't remember which one). During this war, whenever I'd see him report, I'd always think that this was going to be his step up into becoming perhaps a regular NBC anchor. What a terrible loss...
so the death though had nothing to do with the fact that he was in Iraq... or is this something that if he was somewhere where he was near a hospital might not have killed him?
I'm stunned. He has been one of the main guy's whose coverage I have followed closely. He was doing a great job. I don't need the news bad enough to have people die. I remember in the first few days of the war where there was a sniper in a building, and they sent tanks out there to deal with it, the soldiers were on the ground trying to stay out of the view of the snipers, and there's a reporter sitting up talking into the camera. Yeah, reporting the news is worth potentially getting your head blown off. Can't report the news without a head! Geez.
It's hard to say. The kind of blood clot that caused his death is oftentimes due to lack of leg activity. Perhaps sitting in awkward positions in the army vehicle led to this clot, perhaps not. Doctors say 10% of people with this type of clot die almost instantly.
They have a doctor on MSNBC now, she said that even if he was near a top of the line hospital in the states, people that suffer from a pulmonary embolism still have a 50% mortality rate...
I'm more concerned with the soldiers who have died. For some reason it just doesn't seem right that a newsanchor's death is more important than a soldier's.
I don't think either one's death is more important than the other's. It's simply that people actually "know" Bloom more than the average soldier.
Would you be more saddened if Lance Armstrong got killed by a drunk driver or some random Joe? Its the same thing but on a smaller scale. People know Bloom and they have no clue who a random soldier is. Bottom line: They are both humans and both deaths are equally important.
The reason I asked was because I read somewhere that he was the 2nd reporter to die in iraq and it seemed from the context that they were grouping him with the other that died in combat.. and I wasnt sure if I was missing something or if this was in someway caused by combat.. either way it is tragic.. he was the reporter I have probably enjoyed the most during this war...
