Bob Woodruff to receive journalism award
LOS ANGELES (AP) -April 10, 2008 "We couldn't find a more deserving recipient of this award than
Bob Woodruff," said Chris Woodyard, a USA Today reporter, in a
statement Wednesday on behalf of the Los Angeles Press Club.
"Woodruff showed courage not only by going in harm's way to
report in Iraq, but then bravely facing a long and difficult
recovery after being wounded."
Woodruff will receive the honor named for Daniel Pearl, the late
Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and killed in
Pakistan in 2002, on June 21 in Los Angeles.
Woodruff suffered serious brain injury in January 2006, when a
roadside blast in Iraq tore off part of his skull. He spent 36 days
in a medically induced coma, but returned to the job 13 months
later and recently won a Peabody Award for his series "Wounds of
War - The Long Road Home of Our Nation's Veterans."
"Bob has become an iconic role model, not only of journalistic
courage and integrity, but also of the capacity of the human spirit
to turn injury into challenge," Daniel Pearl's parents Judea and
Ruth Pearl said in a statement.
Past recipients include the late Michael Kelly of Atlantic
Monthly, Time Magazine journalists Michael Weisskopf and James
Nachtwey and Jesus Blancornelas, editor of the Mexican weekly Zeta.
Last year's award was won by veteran war correspondent Kevin Sites.
The first award went to Pearl, who was researching a story on
alleged links between al-Qaida member Richard Reid - the so-called
shoe bomber - and Islamic militants in Pakistan when he was
kidnapped and killed.