American Troops in Afghanistan

Earlier this week, French television, F1, the privately held channel with close ties to the French president, did a special report on a platoon of American soldiers on point near Kandahar.
The soldiers' mission is to keep nearby villages free of Taliban infiltrators, a task nearly impossible because of the local villagers' fear, and sometimes sympathy, for the Taliban. The F1 TV unit followed the soldiers out as they circled and entered a village in an effort to locate Taliban they knew were hiding out nearby.
While the platoon was on its way to the village, they came to a dried-mud wall about 4 feet high. The wall ran along a dirt road and seemed to provide some protection from snipers. The platoon leader said village men and boys would usually come out to wave at them, take their coordinates, relay them to the Taliban, and then hurry back into the village before the Taliban fired mortar rounds at the platoon. French TV viewers saw the footage of this happening.
In the village, everyone was polite but somewhat reticent with the platoon, which was asking about their activities and whether there had been Taliban in the village lately. Of course, the platoon already knew the answer so it didn't matter that the villagers lied.
The platoon then left the village and continued circling along the mud wall. There was a specially-trained soldier in front checking for land mines. He found nothing.
All of a sudden, the TV screen filled with dust and a bomb-like noise was heard.
Instead of ending the report there, the French TV crew kept filming. A GI had stepped on a mine and had his two legs and one arm blown off. TV viewers saw him writhing in pain and demanding morphine. The doctor who was with the platoon gave him the shots and screamed for someone to radio for an evacuation chopper.
I was so stunned that I started to cry. My Swiss husband was shocked. My tears turned to anger. Real anger. My first reaction was - what if it had been an American TV crew filming a French platoon? Would the American TV channel have cut short the report, which was, afterall, edited and prepared before being shown on French television. I asked my sister, an American as I am, the next time we talked by phone if American TV had ever shown such a sequence. The answer was again shock and "no."
Why would any TV channel, and especially one in a country that has troops on the ground in Afghanistan, want to show a young man being blown to pieces and waiting for evacuation? I cannot find an answer. 
The French anchor did say that he survived and is now in Walter Reed Hospital.
It still makes me angry every time I think of it.

PS: I'm having difficulties in posting new quotes. I hope to get the problem resolved soon.