WPCNR News and Comment by John F Bailey. February 16, 2011:
Stop reading right now. I would not want to spoil your day.
For I propose to tell you about the horror of Lara Logan.
You couldn’t read about her in your local Gannett paper this morning.
You won’t read about the Horror of Lara Logan until page 12 of. The New York Times this morning.
Ms. Logan is a jolting side effect of the wonderful Egyptian revolution being hailed as an exercise in the rule of the people, a “triumph” of democracy,promoted as a model of a revolution by armchair analysts of revolutions.
Ms. Logan is the foreign correspondent for 60 Minutes and CBS News.
She was “repeatedly sexually assaulted and beaten,” according to a news release from CBS News issued late last night, (reported three days after it happened).
She was assaulted by a mob of 200 people last Friday while Egyptians were celebrating the resignation of their president, who had already left. Two hundred persons decided to celebrate by gang raping a correspondent.
According to the CBS report, Ms.Logan got separated from her camera crew and security, was seized by the mob, seized, beaten, and I use the CBS words “repeatedly sexually assaulted.”
It was nothing new in this revolution. And less serious attacks were made on three other reporters—big names.
Three of the biggest names in television news had already been attacked in their coverage of this revolution, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Christiane Amanpour and CBS’s Katie Couric also reported being roughed up, according to TMZ.
CBS might have expected that this might happen again.
Ms. Logan is journalist victim of Egyptian violence number 140 since this revolution began.
It was not the first attack on a woman reporter either. Brian Stelter’s article in the New York Times today, reported that Esquire’s website said that Ms. Logan, quote, thought her team included one security staff member when she Ms. Logan arrived in Cairo last Thursday before the worst day of her life
CBS in the face of 53 registered official attacks on journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists plus dozens of harassment cases and some female journalists being singled out by crowds—
CBS in light of three of the biggest names in news, including their own anchor and experiencing danger –
Assigned only one security person, according to the Esquire website.
That is incredible. I hope this is erroneous and there were more.
I repeat, that is incredible,if true.
More to the point, did this camera crew that the mob separated Ms. Logan from — video her being dragged away? That’s their instinct.
Does CBS have the whole Logan attack on tape was their equipment rendered inoperative? Wait until the digital photographs of Ms. Logan’s horrible experience surface on the YouTube posted by the mobbers showing themselves in action,
I cannot speak for the cameramen who got separated from Logan and I’m sure they feel terrible. I hope they kept shooting, at least with their cameras, but we should see what they shot,if they shot.
I think 60 Minutes should just put it on the program next Sunday and run it. .
More suspicious,and I just thought of this Wednesday night — and this is probably just coincidental — Two hundred rowdies just happen to close in on Logan, eight days after President M’s security questioned Ms. Logan?
CBS should be demanding these wild dogs be rounded up and punished. The State Department should be calling for an investigation by the army. Where’s Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. Obama and our President on this issue.
They should round up Mubarak and question him on whether this was a planned brutal message to reporters that is hard to ignore.
How long did it last? Just run the tape. If CBS has the live feed out there and maybe then people might not print as they did on the first reports on AOL tagged, wrote “Lara Logan “raped” with the word rape in single quotes.
There should never be quotes around the word rape. Quotes are “winks.” They are a way squeamish editors have of lightening up a situation and making an unpleasant thing palatable and acceptable to glom over, not to make anyone feel bad. Quotes diffuse.
Showing the tape hearing the audio if any was made, would perhaps take this national thing about rape to a higher realistic level.
In the greater picture, violence against women in general, and violence against men in general might be taken seriously if any tape, if it exists is shown.
Tell you why: rape and violence against women and men is a staple plot twist for American and world entertainment today and has been for decades.
No matter how “realistic” (here, quotes denote sarcasm) rape is portrayed in fictional books, movies and television series, its effect in this reporter’s opinion, characterizes sexual violence as vicariously dangerous and subtly thrilling. It’s shot that way. Remember Angelina Jolie being tortured in SALT?
Do you remember the rape of Tony’s girlfriend psychiatrist in The Sopranos? Remember the forcing by a drug dealer of the vice uncover policewoman to submit to him on a Miami Vice episode about 35 years ago? I remember those things. The reason I remember them is they filled me with great disgust because featuring rape as a storyline glamorized disrespect for women by tough guys, in this reporter’s opinion.
Now, it does not matter to Ms. Logan, how many security men she had whether she had one or 20.
It wasn’t enough. It took a band of women and twenty Egyptian soldiers to rescue her from God knows what.
This incident is another black eye for CBS News.
Here’s the point. The protests were going on for what a couple of weeks, three weeks. We know what they look like by now.
You can take pictures from overhead or a building high above the fray and zoom in with the lenses to show that. You don’t have to stick a reporter out there in the street to show how brave you reporters are and how you’re really going out there to get the story.
As someone in the business said to me, it’s like reporting a snowstorm by sticking your hand down in the snow and holding out the snow to the camera.
Lara Logan bless her brave heart went out there
Now she has one meaningful story to tell. If she can.
Just tell us why she should have to do that, wiseguy,you might ask.
I do.
CBS has not told us Ms. Logan’s condition, except to say she was recovering.
CBS has not reported what physical injuries she’s suffering.
Will she be ever be able to report again, speak again?
This is really disrespect for their own reporter now, unless Ms. Logan’s family wanted CBS to suppress the injuries which we can understand.
CBS was incredibly cryptic about putting out the news on this.
How can you send your reporters into the melee without protection?
How can you do that, of course, we reporters just have this nose for news that lands us in hot water,
Really bad people that you encounter in real life are not like the really bad people in movies and unfortunately everybody should wake up to this fact.
Mobs are dangerous. No matter what they stand for. Demonstrations have been encouraged by the news networks for years. The more violent, the more network coverage they get.
Demonstration coverage for years has consisted of sending reporters out into the crowds to get the feel of the spirit of the protest. Sending reporters out there puts them in the clutches of a mob.
This whole question of protesting and using the dynamics of the mob to achieve things has been glorified and encouraged over the decades by television, they, because it’s a visual story, it’s organized hoopla. It’s an easy call for them.
However, what do they focus on?
The fires,the looting, with gory detail, (remember Detroit?) and the violence, and talking heads pontificate without credibility, while brave reporters are put out there with very little forethought by their bosses to their safety, at least in this case, that appears to be the case.
CBS has a lot of explaining to do. And hides behind “no further comment out of respect for the family?”
If I am a member of a national labor organization representing on-air talent that does news reporting, I would make this a cornerstone of the association agenda, and I would put security right at the top of the list.
They focus on the violence and here is this horrible, horrible experience of Ms. Logan, the danger of the mob of inciting criminal elements to do what they want to do, whether it’s stealing statues from the Egyptian Museum thousands of years old or taking the opportunity to rough up and rape reporters representing American news organizations.
It’s all about the hatred folks.
This is a grotesque story folks. It puts out there one of the great mainstays of television series scriptwriters for decades, the threatened female, but it makes it a blunt, dirty reality.
Watch TV any night: we can see strong, intelligent, gutsy heroines constantly threatened with criminal elements in series, and men attack them, subtlely suggesting strong women have it coming.
Well, last Friday a real such person was attacked viciously in a “repeated sexual assault” was the words that CBS news used, which is actually really blunt for them.
Now.
How this goes forward raises a lot of questions. With 140 journalists attacked during this exercise in toppling yet another long line of tyrants whom we’ve supported over the years they’re going be other events like this. Should reporters cover them differently?
Do we need it? Do we need to send reporters out there to get the story put interpreters, etc. at risk. Do we need to do that, yes we do, however, they have got to protect reporters better.
Of course there is going to be the word that she knew the risks, and she took it.
She did not know the risks.
You never know what the risks are things can turn ugly. Instantly.
That is apparently what happened from CBS news sketchy report released to the Associated Press last night indicated.
She was rescued by some women in the crowd and some soldiers, according to CBS release. Well, we salute them for coming to her aid. A bit too late, but they did, and it’s to their credit, risking their lives.
Let me assure you this goes out to all women and men entering dangerous professions that can put them in real danger. You really need to take care yourself out there. Be careful out there.
As a reporter fighter for truth, justice and the right, you’re more important than the story because if something happens to you, there is no one left to write the next story.
Now for Ms. Logan, personally, I cannot put myself in her shoes right now. However, this is one of the first times a reporter, world-known personality has been put in a situation where she can describe with the candor and bluntness of a reporter exactly what it means to be sexually assaulted repeatedly what kind of mental scars it carries.
Blow-by-blow.
She would dispel once and for all the hideous myth perpetuated by the media that sexual assault is glamorous, as portrayed on film and on television. Supposedly, rendering a realistic creation of violence of it, but I don’t think you can ever really do that because it’s acted.
Ms. Logan, unfortunately, now knows firsthand the horrors and she may not wish to go into details, but for the sake of women and men out there I encourage her to hold a news conference when she’s willing and able to talk about this to tell what happened. How it affected her. She will not know for several weeks whether she has contracted a sexual disease.
CBS could’ve been a little more praiseworthy of Ms. Logan in that release. They didn’t paint a picture of her career. They did not recount the awards she has won. They did not recite some of the scoops. They just reported that she was repeatedly sexually assaulted. They gave her no respect for her bravery.
Really an amateur, lame effort by p.r. on this release.
But of course, she’s a brave, brave person and she was attacked by people who were not brave.
They were not patriots.
Let us not forget that the people who commit sexual assault are just very small, insignificant people.
They deserve no respect.
They usually commit sexual assault, particularly violent sexual assault because they like to do it.
They like to do it.
That’s all I have to say, while one other thing, Those TV News directors have got to be more careful. Pay more attention to security of their reporters because too often these days, reporters are the targets.
