Katie Couric will spend her Labor Day vacation reporting from Baghdad just days after a CBS translator was kidnapped and killed in Iraq.
Couric will anchor the “CBS Evening News” all next week from the war zone.
She leaves for the Middle East tonight after wrapping up her news telecast.
The move is timed to the release of Gen. David Petraeus’ status report on the U.S. military “surge” in Iraq, scheduled to be delivered to the Bush administration on Sept. 15.
The trip has been in the works for six weeks and was planned with the cooperation of the U.S. military, “Evening News” executive producer Rick Kaplan told Broadcasting and Cable.
Reporting from Iraq – especially for high profile U.S. news talent – has become hazardous duty.
The hotel where the CBS News Baghdad bureau is housed was bombed in June. In May 2006, soundman James Brolin and cameraman Paul Douglas were killed in an attack that left correspondent Kimberly Dozier with severe injuries.
In January 2006, former “ABC World News” co-anchor Bob Woodruff was nearly killed in an IED attack while traveling with the Iraqi.
“We’ve learned a lot from our colleagues, sometimes for things that we’ve done really right and sometimes from things they didn’t,” said Kaplan.
“But all of them are lessons,” Kaplan said. “God knows this is a network that has had its share of heartbreak there. We’ve learned from that. We’re not going to take unnecessary risks. But we think it’s worth it for the level of the story.”