Walters, Sawyer and
Couric have been
headliners for decades,
but what effect do women
have on the news and
today’s audiences?
Jennifer Griffin of FOX News sat on the dirt under a
makeshift, tin-roofed garage in the Gaza Strip, working
on what would become a defining assignment: Secure the
release of two FOX colleagues who had been kidnapped
by a group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades.
In August 2006, Griffin and fellow members of
the FOX team in the Middle East had been feverishly
seeking release of the two kidnapped men—American
correspondent Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf
Wiig—for more than a week. Now, they had arranged
for a midnight meeting with warlords believed to have
information about the two men’s whereabouts. There
was no electricity; only the headlights of the surrounding
sense and
sensibility
vehicles carrying gunmen of assorted clans broke the
darkness of the night. For what seemed like an eternity,
discussions went nowhere. At one point, a central warlord leader told the FOX team he had no idea where the
hostages were.
“That’s ridiculous,” Griffin said. She asked him to
call a key contact. The leader snapped his fingers, and
one of his men provided a cell phone. After the call, the
leader turned to Griffin. The contact, he told Griffin
and her colleagues, has no idea where your friends are.
Griffin had had enough.
“I stood up and told him, ‘Excuse me, who do you
take us for?’” she says, recalling the events.
BY DENNIS MCCAFFERTY
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBB SCHARETG
