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Thursday, November 14, 2013

CBS's 60 Minutes and Lara Logan's Benghazi Hoax



Frank Rich, writing in New York Magazine brings up some serious questions about Logan's involvement in the now discredited report CBS's 60 Minutes ran on the Benghazi tragedy.

Here is Rich:


"Lara Logan’s story was not a mere journalistic mistake, but a hoax comparable to such legendary frauds as Life magazine’s purchase of the billionaire Howard Hughes’s nonexistent “autobiography” in the seventies and Rupert Murdoch’s similarly extravagant embrace of the bogus Hitler “diaries” in the eighties. In Logan’s case, she perpetrated an out-and-out fictional character: a pseudonymous security contractor who peddled a made-up “eyewitness” account of the murder of four Americans in Benghazi. 

The point seemed to be to further Benghazi as a conservative political cause (instead, Logan’s hoax boomeranged and extinguished it) and to melodramatically exploit the tragic slaughter of Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues as titillating prime-time network entertainment. Logan’s phony source, who in fact was at a beachside villa and not on site to witness anything, cooked up violent new “details” for the Benghazi narrative that seemed to have been lifted from a Jean Claude Van Damme movie.

Here are a few questions that Logan’s “apology” — every bit as bogus as the story itself — failed to answer.

(1) How could Logan (by her own account) have worked “for a year” on this report and not done the elementary cross-checking that allowed Karen De Young of the Washington Post to expose the fraud almost immediately after it aired? Indeed, what was Logan doing during that long year?

(2) Why did CBS News trust a reporter with such obvious political agendas? Logan had given an over-the-top red-meat political speech about Benghazi around the time she started pursuing the story a year ago. And she had also maligned the patriotism of the late reporter Michael Hastings when he had the audacity to question the loyalty and judgment of the American General Stanley McChrystal and his cohort in Afghanistan.

(3) What was the relationship between Logan, her source, and the source’s publisher, which is also owned by CBS? Accounts of the 60 Minutes scandal keep referring to that publisher as Simon & Schuster, but that’s not strictly accurate. Logan’s source was not being published by the S&S that is bringing out Doris Kearns Goodwin’s new book on Teddy Roosevelt. His book was being published instead by an S&S subdivision, Threshold, whose authors include Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Mark Levin, Lynne Cheney, and Jerome Corsi, best known for promoting the Swift Boating of John Kerry and the birther conspiracies about Barack Obama. Why would Logan and CBS News be in bed with such a partisan publisher? Who was the editor who vetted the book containing the same hoax that Logan aired on 60 Minutes? (Threshold’s editor-in-chief is Mary Matalin.)

(4) Logan said in her apology that it was “a mistake” to have included her source in her report. But as many have asked, what was the report without that source? Inquiring minds do want to know."



I've yet to read anything in the conservative blogsphere talking about the discredited CBS report on the Benghazi incident.  Nothing from the blogs that tripped over themselves in featuring Lara Logan's "mistake."  

Why?   

It doesn't fit their narrative of a cover-up scandal, so they don't see why they should report the fact that it was a botched, partisan, put-up-of-a-fake story.

The inimitable Stephen Colbert pwns CBS and its dishonesty.







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9 comments:

Infidel753 said...

Terribly disappointing. I can remember when 60 Minutes was one of the best news programs out there.

The pressure on CBS needs to be kept up. It's inconceivable that Logan worked on this project for a year and didn't realize the whole "scandal" was a scam and her star witness a phony. What's baffling is that she apparently thought she could get away with it -- that the untruths would not be quickly exposed. Maybe even she spends too much time in the right-wing media bubble, where reality can always be kept at bay, at least except when election results intrude?

Les Carpenter said...

I'm not convinced we know, or ever will know the full truth about Benghazi.

This bogus report certainly doesn't help. As the article says.

Dave Miller said...

Shaw, here's a report that truly exposes what CBS did.

You should have included the Dan Rather debacle in your unnamed Hall of Shame...

Sadly, we will see more and more of this happen as people clamor for news fast, as opposed to accurate. It used to be we waited for the bodies to be buried and the investigation before assigning blame.

Now, and Benghazi is a good example, some felt we had to assign blame almost that night, rather than wait for the facts.

RN, you may be right, but I am not sure it is a coverup as some allege. Perhaps the complete truth is just something about which, with no survivors, we can never know.

Anyways... here's the link...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/13/208446/questions-about-60-minutes-benghazi.html

skudrunner said...

There are still a lot of people who have first hand knowledge of what happened that have not been heard.

I agree with RN, we will probably never know the truth but what difference does it make.

Ducky's here said...

"Why would Logan and CBS News be in bed with such a partisan publisher?"

-------
I assume that's rhetorical.

I'm more concerned about when the public will get wise to the lack of reportage in our news and the sheer farcical meme about "liberal" media.

RN, of course we don't know the full truth. The CIA was running an operation and something went wrong. They don't publicize that sort of stuff. It's part of the Grand Game regardless of which party is in office.

The important issue here IS NOT the events at Benghazi. Rather the crucial issue is that people like Logan think we're a bunch of freaking suckers.

"By now you know
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
'Til we wise up"
--- with apologies to Aimee Mann

Dervish Sanders said...

I wonder what RN thinks is being covered up? Not that I'm asking, mind you (as I won't bother asking a question I know will never be answered). In any case, I'm sure that (if Hillary runs for the presidency) the Benghazi (hoax) will be used against her.

Ducky's here said...

... whose authors include Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Mark Levin, Lynne Cheney, and Jerome Corsi
------
Must be a plethora of Booker prizes in that group.

So the "liberal media" is a prime publisher of the noise machine.
And they got caught lying to make a buck once again.

Dave Miller said...

Ducky, good points that will probably be lost...

I was sitting a couple of years ago with some conservative people and the subject of the Middle East came up...

They had no idea that the US had ever participated in the overthrow of democratically governments over there, much less that it had happened on Republican watch.

These things happen when you run spy ops... it does not, of course lesson the pain for the people involved, but it is a life, and a risk, those involved usually chose.

us regular guys will never know what happened. Do we need to?

I'm not sure.

Anonymous said...

Not that the administration would ever lie to the American people but doesn't it make you wonder even a little bit as to the reason the CIA had people sign another non-disclosure agreement?

I don't think the president was involved because he is clueless but someone had an idea this was inevitable.