to shadow

[Jonathan Lighter]

"To provide continuing on-the-scene news coverage of":

2010 Dexter Filkins in _N.Y. Times_  (May 14) [online version]: Sebastian
Junger...spent months shadowing an American infantry platoon deployed in the
valley.

Now to all normal humans, this suggests that Junger was probably working for
the Taliban, but in fact no. Everybody knew he was there (duh!) as an
American war correspondent. He wasn't tailing them stealthily, as Filkins
(b. 1961, Pulitzer Prize 2002) suggests to those of us of a certain age.
Junger was so "close to the action" that he was riding in an APC with
members of the platoon when it was rocked by a command-detonated IED.

Not what my geriatrifying brain would call "shadowing" the platoon.

I'm also sure I've heard this usage before on TV news, undoubtedly within
the past couple of years.

JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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