New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley suggests that when network anchors parachute in, they sail through the hot spots, "with an inalienable aura of invulnerability, like senators or movie stars."

Until now. With cameraman Doug Vogt and ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff lying in intensive care, the cynics are eating a little crow.

In its initial front-page headline, the Times treated the explosion as a business story: "ABC News Anchor is Badly Injured by Bomb in Iraq: Cameraman Also Injured -- Field Reports Were a Ratings Strategy." That is only half right.

The 6:30 p.m. nightly news may be the most competitive venue in all of journalism, competitive for commercial revenue, certainly, but for news, as well. Instantaneous satellite technology makes worldwide broadcasting pretty routine, so the anchors go where the big stories are. For example, Woodruff was in the Middle East when Ariel Sharon had his stroke. He next covered the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections and then went to Iraq. ABC News is up front about the fact one of its two new anchors, Woodruff or Elizabeth Vargas, will be out of the studio on any given night. Out on assignment.

This trend in the news anchor business was pioneered by Brokaw, Jennings and Rather. Remember Tom Brokaw reporting from the Berlin Wall and interviewing Gorbachev? Remember Dan Rather in Baghdad to interview Saddam just before war broke out? Peter Jennings sometimes dismissed this kind of reporting, saying, "An anchor anchors." But the record shows that he, too, treated the anchor job as an extension of his long career as a foreign correspondent.

Brokaw always said he covered the news with greater depth and understanding by being in the field himself. I agree. It's far better that all the new anchors get seasoned by covering important stories in person. Brian Williams reported Hurricane Katrina from New Orleans and, as a result, NBC News has made a commitment to cover every aspect of Katrina recovery.

Isn't there always an element of danger in sending an anchor, unseasoned in war coverage to a war zone? Of course, ask Bernie Shaw the NBC anchor who was in Baghdad in 1992 waiting to interview Saddam when American missiles began to rain down on the city. Shaw was in a hotel, totally unprotected. His telephone reports conveyed a frightening immediacy. Even the White House and Pentagon were listening to CNN to find out what was going on. CNN's ratings topped out. But don't ask Bernie Shaw if he thinks it was a ratings gimmick.

During Brokaw's last trip to Iraq, just before the war, his old professor, William O. Farber, lamented, "Imagine if they kidnapped Brokaw! What a fix we'd be in then!"

Farber is right. Anchors are much higher profile than the average reporter. The White House announced that it was offering assistance and prayers for Woodruff. Compare that with the situation facing kidnapped reporter Jill Carroll, who was seen on al-Jazeera television pleading for her life that same day. She is a young freelancer, whom her captors threaten to kill if the American military doesn't release all Iraqi women from its jails. We released five last week, half the number we were holding, but officials said it had nothing to do with the kidnappers' demands. We never yield to such pressure. So, Carroll is on her own, facing possible death.

Carroll reminds me of Samantha Power, who covered the Balkans war as a freelancer and witnessed firsthand the genocide committed by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic. Power returned home to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the history of genocide. Sometimes great journalists grow from idealistic freelancers.

What about Carroll? Most of the Iraqi women in detention are of no use to us; they are wives of suspected insurgents, held in hopes of leveraging their husbands to surrender. Couldn't we have released a few more kidnapped female detainees as a gesture toward Carroll's kidnappers? Ponder this: If it were Tom Brokaw on that al-Jazeera tape, pleading for his life, would the military's decision have been so pat and easy?