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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFrank Rich on the National Circus: CBS’s Benghazi Report Was a Hoax
By Frank Rich
On Sunday, CBS News correspondent Lara Logan issued a short and, many commentators felt, insufficient apology for her now-discredited 60 Minutes report on the Benghazi consulate attack. A year ago, Logan had publicly mocked the notion that the Benghazi attack was a protest gone awry and advocated for a stronger U.S. military response. Should CBS have given her this story? How can Logan or her network satisfactorily explain the botched report? And do you see a double standard at work between Logan's fate (issuing a halfhearted apology, so far) and Dan Rather's much harsher penalty for his questionable 60 Minutes report in 2004?
Lara Logans story was not a mere journalistic mistake, but a hoax comparable to such legendary frauds as Life magazines purchase of the billionaire Howard Hughess nonexistent autobiography in the seventies and Rupert Murdochs similarly extravagant embrace of the bogus Hitler diaries in the eighties. In Logans 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, Logans 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. Logans 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 Logans 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 sources publisher, which is also owned by CBS? Accounts of the 60 Minutes scandal keep referring to that publisher as Simon & Schuster, but thats not strictly accurate. Logans source was not being published by the S&S that is bringing out Doris Kearns Goodwins 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? (Thresholds 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.
CBS News is now stonewalling, refusing to answer tough questions by serious media reporters like Paul Farhi of the Washington Post. That seems another mistake. Stephen Colberts devastating parody of the whole incident, with a cameo appearance by Sam Waterston in Newsroom guise, is taking on a viral life of its own. There are so many holes in Logans story that other ambitious journalists will race to fill them in. CBS may be trying to enforce a different standard than it did on the Dan Rather60 Minutes II calamity of 2004, but wishing will not make this one go away.
more
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/11/frank-rich-cbss-benghazi-report-was-a-hoax.html
zbdent
(35,392 posts)to Bush & other republicans?
Blue Owl
(50,373 posts)Propaganda pure and simple.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Just catapulting the propaganda.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Ninga
(8,275 posts)Here is my comment:
The Gold Standard has been tarnished, not so much by the "mistake" in the Benghazi piece, but by the dots that connect 60 Minutes to a thread of GOP stakeholders. And just as important the apparent pass given to Reporter Logan, her producer & researchers.
I just gave them a piece of my mind about their lack of journalistic ethics and double std. Advised if I wanted right wing cant and lies, I could just watch Fox. lol
florida08
(4,106 posts)Gave them my 2 pennies
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)content.
calimary
(81,265 posts)You are STILL giving aid and comfort to Lara Logan? There is no price or penalty for the deliberate hit piece she did, pawning off LIES that might cast the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton in a bad light? Did you have any clue about her hawkish political agenda when you hired her? Did anyone bother to check her "facts" before you fell in love with her pretty face? And if she's allowed to stay, when will Dan Rather and Mary Mapes be reinstated? Surely there's some penalty to be exacted from Lara Logan's complete evisceration of the formerly impeccable "60 Minutes" brand? It was once the gold standard. Now it's trash. CBS was once the home of "the most trusted man in America" - Walter Cronkite, who is probably spinning in his grave at this moment.
progressoid
(49,990 posts)libdem4life
(13,877 posts)That's the PC version. They conspired ...not PC "Hoax" ...and lied. It was beyond political shenanigans. It was borderline slander of PBO and HRC, the Secretary of State at the time...by filmy innuendo, of course...and even more sinister, calculating their target as the Democrat's possible nominee for President. I hope she does not forgive or forget...I won't. Partly because they are not sorry for what they did...it was programmed and planned and executed brilliantly.
The final insult, they revived the pain of the real victims and their families. For shame. The whole host of them should be fired, at best.
BobbyBoring
(1,965 posts)What if Democrats or anyone for that matter conducted themselves the way rethugs are on the original 9/11.
You know, the one where 3,000+ people died on American soil? The one that Bush and Cheney fought tooth and nail to avoid ANY serious investigation. That one.
They all need a nice cup of STFU!
lucca18
(1,241 posts)And, the corporate media plays right along with the Repug's lies.
The Repugs keep on doing it because they "can".
We all suffer, and America suffers because of the blatant propaganda.
dem in texas
(2,674 posts)So sad to see a respected show go down the tubes. But they decided to steal a page from Fox News' playbook, go right, don't check facts and show untrue and half-true stories. Soon all the old guys on 60 minutes will be gone, replaced by blond girls in low-cut sleeveless tops. It's all about selling advertising, the truth does not matter.
Let's wait and see if 60 Minutes has the guts to do the right which is to fire Lara Logan and the people who produced this show.
dem in texas
(2,674 posts)I always loved to read his column in the NYT. Love to see him on TV. No body can write zingers like he can.
librechik
(30,674 posts)Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)dballance
(5,756 posts)busterbrown
(8,515 posts)Fox and right wing media are waiting for both of them...Hugs and jobs...
ut oh
(895 posts)of fake names on that petition...
Ben Dover, TX
etc....
calimary
(81,265 posts)I cannot believe you are keeping this hack and her producer on staff, after they willfully and recklessly trashed the "60 Minutes" brand - that was absolutely sterling, beyond reproach, and trustworthy as could be - until she came along. If THIS is your new standard, that you'll turn your back on simple journalistic ethics, I'd have to ask when you plan to apologize to Dan Rather and Mary Mapes, and reinstate them to their jobs at CBS? FIRE LARA LOGAN!!! AND her producer, AND the Pox Noise operative now masquerading as a CBS News executive overseer.
We need to push HARD on the pressure buttons.
Uncle Joe
(58,361 posts)Thanks for the thread, n2doc.
Berlum
(7,044 posts)...this CBS, Inc (R) intentional right-wing fraud on the American people is not going away...It's too damn deliberate, and too damn evil.
boomersense
(147 posts)for self-aggrandizement at the expense of the Democrats. Lying Lara had an agenda, although lying is not exactly new to her. She has to go. Maybe she can join the new blonde, big-haired, hyper-sexualized bimbo Megyn Kelly. They can maybe join together and do a hit piece on Mother Theresa or John the Baptist.
WinstonSmith4740
(3,056 posts)Dan Rather's much harsher penalty for his questionable 60 Minutes report in 2004?
If I remember correctly, the report was on the fact that Junior never bothered finishing the last 18 months of his National Guard commitment. (The fact that he jumped over an 18 month waiting list, requested state-side assignments, and was trained to pilot a plane that was in the process of being fazed out of service in 'Nam was never even mentioned.) He had requested a leave of absence to work on the campaign of one of Poppy's friends, and never bothered going back to finish up, because y'know, Daddy's rich so he could. Dan Rather's report fell apart when he was interviewing a woman who was in her 80's and claimed she had never typed a memo 40 freaking years before. Now, I've known lots of people in their 80's who are sharp as tacks, but I seriously doubt they can remember every piece of paper that came across their desks 40 years ago. But CBS bought it, and along with the other gutless Dems at the time, abondoned Dan Rather and let him twist in the wind.
Blue Owl
(50,373 posts)n/t
colsohlibgal
(5,275 posts)Dan's story was true even with a problem with one document. The future "Decider" had daddy get him out of any real duty and off to the National Guard and he scarcely showed up. Other young men back then didn't have a connected person like Poppy Bush for a dad and got killed or maimed in SE Asia. Lara Logan's piece was phonier than a $2 dollar bill, it was indeed Faux News CBS division.
Rather was fired and apparently is still not welcome at CBS - he wasn't even invited to be a part of CBS's JFK 50 year special even though that event was where he first sprang into prominence. NBC is showing some class, he'll be on their special.
Lara Logan still has a job there - why? Rather's story was true and he's persona non grata at CBS.
Loved the Colbert/Waterston bit. Nobody does a better job of pointing out the lies and often stunning hypocrisy in politics than Colbert and Stewart - and not just from the republicans. That's where we are now, we depend on a comedy channel to hold politician's and other's feet to the fire.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Because it will.
Skittles
(153,160 posts)I simply do not believe this was in good faith
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Berlum
(7,044 posts)But since CBS has sold its soul to the Republicon Lie Machine, Inc., we know from now on to expect that you will lie to America again.
We won't be watching.
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)That weird outburst / speech she gave demanding "clandestine warriors" take terrible "vengeance" eliminated her as a reporter on Benghazi flat-out.
The rest of the details, like grabbing a writer from the Jerome Corsi division of CBS's publishing arm as her key source, suggest CBS understood the bias, embraced the bias, and hoped to snag some audience from amongst the red-meat-starved Tea Party demo.
There's no way CBS and 60 Minutes didn't know they were shredding the rulebook on this one. It's hard to even argue they were legitmately "fooled." No one serious about getting it right would have put this reporter on this story, with this "source."
And the fact they apparently intend to keep on trucking, particularly after the way they jettisioned Rather, who was legimitately fooled, speaks volumes of bad about where CBS is heading.
CatWoman
(79,302 posts)I'd love to see it