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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCBS Still Won't Come Clean About Lara Logan And The Benghazi Debacle
While the walls were collapsing around Lara Logan at CBS News last year in the wake of her bungled Benghazi report on 60 Minutes, and as more and more holes appeared in her poorly-sourced report about the terror attack, the foreign correspondent reached out to a Republican senator and fierce White House critic for advice and counsel.
The partisan move, in which Logan solicited help from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) -- who's been professionally committed to pushing the tale of a White House cover-up surrounding the September 11, 2012 terror attacks -- suggests Logan viewed both Benghazi and her spin control mission through a political prism.
Indeed, Logan even met several times with Graham while preparing the initial Benghazi story, according to a new report in New York magazine. The senator did not appear in the 60 Minutes report but when the report aired he immediately took to the television airwaves to tout it as a "death blow" to the Obama administration's telling of the Benghazi attacks and their response to it. In retrospect, this looks suspiciously like coordination: Graham helped shape the Benghazi story with an anti-White House angle and then forcefully cheerled it, even announcing he'd block every White House appointee until he got answers about Benghazi. Once trouble erupted, the senator was naturally there for Logan when she called for help.
"The story fit broadly into the narrative the right had been trying for months to build of a White House and State Department oblivious to the dangers of Al Qaeda, feckless in their treatment of their soldiers and diplomats, then covering up their incompetence," notes New York's Joe Hagan. The article casts doubt that Logan, who took a leave of absence from CBS in the wake of the Benghazi debacle last November, will ever return to the network.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/05/05/cbs-still-wont-come-clean-about-lara-logan-and/199164
arcane1
(38,613 posts)okaawhatever
(9,453 posts)could have fact-checked the story and found it erroneous.
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)She was a fearless reporter and her very existence was violated.
I'm giving her a pass, but her team, producers, 60 Minutes and CBS really dropped the ball.
atreides1
(16,046 posts)And you want to blame everyone else...was it also their fault that she started sucking up to Senator Graham?
She doesn't get a free pass...from me!!!
951-Riverside
(7,234 posts)I don't think she was thinking with a clear head when she did that report.
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)You don't come back from that unchanged.
Orrex
(63,084 posts)I don't diminish her experiences or her trauma, but if these inform her journalism so profoundly that she can be moved to fabricate falsehoods for a political agenda, then she needs to be moved to a position from which "the heart of darkness" can't damage the functioning of the federal government.
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)She didn't have a credible source, and it could have been checked by her team. She is not alone.
Her recent experience had to have influenced her perception of those events. These lonely deaths in a place we had just helped free from a madman tyrant? The locals rose up and slaughtered us? No one came to help? A compelling report from an eyewitness who had already testified? No one checked to see what his story was, though.
I call it PTSD. No excuse for the others who should have done the checking.
Maybe you could call me a 'bleeding heart liberal'?
Orrex
(63,084 posts)I don't believe that anyone is excusing her so-called "fact checkers," but I see no reason why Logan should get a pass.
You might be a bleeding heart liberal or you might not. It's not for me to say, and IMO it has no bearing on the current discussion.
Kingofalldems
(38,360 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)That would be my guess.
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)She knew what she was doing.
Initech
(99,909 posts)Kingofalldems
(38,360 posts)This is the way they operate, it's been that way since Watergate.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,063 posts)It looks like Lara Logan was advanced after CBS fired Dan Rather in an attempt to show they did not have a liberal bias.
http://nymag.com/news/features/lara-logan-cbs-news-2014-5/
WillyT
(72,631 posts)spanone
(135,630 posts)Chuck Todd: It's Not Media's Job To Correct GOP's Obamacare Falsehoods
Cha
(295,899 posts)poor pooch.