CBS correspondent Kimberly Dozier, who survived a car bomb attack on May 29, 2006, while she was on assignment in Iraq, spoke to AU students Nov. 24 about her ordeal and intensive recovery.
"The hardest part of looking back at the footage is that it puts me back as the victim," Dozier said. "People remember that person on the stretcher, the skull photo, and they can't reconcile that with the person I am now."
Dozier was reporting on the activities of U.S. soldiers in Iraq that day when a 500-pound bomb exploded underneath her vehicle. The bomb killed her cameraman, Paul Douglas, and her soundman, James Brolin, in addition to her escort.
Medics at the scene re-started her heart twice and rushed her to a field hospital. Dozier's survival was considered miraculous, she said.
"I actually received medical care last, everyone else was already being worked on," Dozier said.
Dozier's treatment included the insertion of titanium rods into both her legs and more than a dozen surgeries to remove shrapnel. After the doctors finished working on her, Dozier still had to re-teach herself how to walk.
Throughout her recovery, Dozier talked about her experience with "everyone who walked into the room," she said.
Now Dozier offers her struggle to recover as an example to others, such as U.S. troops who have returned from touring and are now coping with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The key to Dozier's ability to move beyond her experience was how she accepted that it happened immediately after she started recovery, she said.
"[I am] teaching 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds that they need to think about what they went through and process it - they think I'm lecturing them, but I'm just trying to teach people how to move on," Dozier said.
Her experience also brought "uncomfortable and unwelcome" attention back to the situation in Iraq, she said.
"The stuff I reported going wrong - now my reporting is being examined and scrutinized," Dozier said.
The job of covering the situation in Iraq five years ago was very difficult, and it is no easier to report from the area today, she said.
Network stations are shrinking their budgets for overseas coverage because of the enormous costs. It cost more than $1 million per month to maintain even a minimal news bureau when Dozier was stationed in Iraq, she said.
As a rookie network reporter in 2003, Dozier had to differentiate herself from other reporters, so she considered either going back to school or reporting overseas. But she decided to do both.
Dozier worked her way through a master's degree in Islamic extremism from the University of Virginia and was stationed in Egypt, where she covered stories for CBS Radio, The Washington Post, the Voice of America and BBC.
She was able to report from Baghdad after offering then "CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather a ride in her convoy in exchange for entry visas, which were difficult to obtain.
"The first stories I covered [in Iraq] were about clinic openings," Dozier said. "But when I tried to cover the good work side, I got slammed by conservative journalists. When I tried to cover the other side, I was pinned as left-wing media."
Audiences are tired of hearing the same sort of stories from the region, she said.
"It's very hard to get a story that looks different from the usually stories about officer training, combat under fire, aid stories and coverage of the Afghanistan police," Dozier said. "How do you tell [the story] in a different way?"
Dozier is now covering the Pentagon and the White House as a CBS correspondent.
"The trick is to find [a story] that is relatable to Americans," she said.
You can reach this staff writer at klitvin@theeagleonline.com.
