Lara Logan Biography

Lara Logan (born 29 March 1971) is a South African television and radio journalist, and war correspondent. She is the chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News, and a correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes.

Personal life

Logan was born in Durban, South Africa. She attended high school at Durban Girls' College, and the University of Natal in Durban, graduating in 1992 with a degree in commerce. She went on to earn a diploma in French language, culture and history at the Universit de l'Alliance Franaise in Paris.

She married Jason Siemon, a 6'8" Irish European leagues professional basketball player from Iowa, in 1998. The marriage ended in divorce. After extramarital affairs for both, in 2008 she married Lincoln Group propagandist Joseph Burkett, a U.S. government defense contractor from Texas, whom she met years before in Afghanistan.

They live in Washington, D.C., with their son Joseph Washington V (b. December 2008) and daughter Lola (b. March 2010), and Burkett's daughter from a previous marriage.

Career

Logan worked as a news reporter for the Sunday Tribune in Durban during her studies (1988-1989), then for the city's Daily News (1990-1992). In 1992 she joined Reuters Television in Africa, primarily as a senior producer. After four years she branched out into freelance journalism, obtaining assignments as a reporter and editor/producer with ITN and Fox/SKY, CBS News, ABC News (in London), NBC, and the European Broadcast Union. She also found work with CNN, reporting on incidents such as the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Nairobi and Tanzania, the conflict in Northern Ireland, and the Kosovo war.

Logan was hired in 2000 by GMTV Breakfast Television (in the UK) as a correspondent; she also worked with CBS News Radio as a freelance correspondent. Days after the 11 September attacks, she asked a clerk at the Russian Embassy in London to give her a visa to travel to Afghanistan. In November 2001, while in Afghanistan working for GMTV, she infiltrated the American-British-backed Northern Alliance and interviewed their commander, General Babajan, at the Bagram Air Base.

CBS News offered her a full-fledged correspondent position in 2002. She spent much of the next four years reporting from the battlefield, including war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, often embedded with the American Armed Forces. Many of her reports were for 60 Minutes II. She is also a regular contributor to the CBS Evening News, The Early Show and Face The Nation. In February 2006, Logan was promoted to "Chief foreign affairs correspondent" for CBS News.

Haifa Street fighting

In late January 2007, Logan filed a report of fighting along Haifa Street in Baghdad, but the CBS Evening News did not run the report; deeming it "a bit strong". To reverse the decision, Logan enlisted public support; requesting them to watch the story and pass the link to as many of their friends and acquaintances as possible, saying "It should be seen". Logan later used the Haifa Street material for a 60 Minutes' report on Baghdad during the surge.

Criticism of Michael Hastings

Logan was criticized in June 2010 for her remarks about another journalist, the late Michael Hastings, and her view that reporters who embed with the military ought not to write about the general banter they hear. An article by Hastings in Rolling Stone that month quoted General Stanley A. McChrystal and his staff"?comments Hastings overheard while traveling with McChrystal"?criticizing U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden and other officials, after which President Obama fired McChrystal as his commander in Afghanistan. Logan told CNN that Hastings' reporting had violated an unspoken agreement between reporters who travel with military personnel not to report casual comments that pass between them.

Quoting her statement, "I mean, the question is, really, is what General McChrystal and his aides are doing so egregious, that they deserved to end a career like McChrystal's? I mean, Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has." CNN's former chief military correspondent, Jamie McIntyre, said that what they did was indeed egregious, and that her comments "unfortunately reinforced the worst stereotype of reporters who 'embed' with senior military officers but are actually 'in bed' with them." He went on to quote Admiral Mike Mullen's statement that military personnel must be neutral and should not criticize civilian leaders.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon wrote that she had done courageous reporting over the years, but had come to see herself as part of the government and military.

Reporting from Egypt and sexual assault

Logan and her CBS crew were arrested and detained for one night by the Egyptian Army on 3 February 2011, while covering the Egyptian Revolution. She said the crew was blindfolded and handcuffed at gunpoint, and their driver beaten. They were advised to leave the country, but were later released.

On 15 February 2011, CBS News released a statement that Logan had been beaten and sexually assaulted on 11 February, while covering the celebrations in Tahrir Square following Hosni Mubarak's resignation. CBS 60 Minutes broadcast an interview with her about it on 1 May 2011; she said she was speaking out because of the prevalence of sexual assault in Egypt, and to break the silence about the sexual violence women reporters are reluctant to report in case it prevents them from doing their jobs.

She said the incident involved 200-300 men and lasted around 25 minutes. She had been reporting the celebrations for an hour without incident when her camera battery failed. One of the Egyptian CBS crew suggested they leave, telling her later he heard the crowd make inappropriate sexual comments about her. She felt hands touching her, and can be heard shouting "stop", just as the camera died. One of the crowd shouted that she was an Israeli, a Jew, a claim that CBS said, though false, was a "match to gasoline". She went on to say that they tore off her clothes and, in her words, raped her with their hands, while taking photographs with their cellphones. They began pulling her body in different directions, pulling her hair so hard she said it seemed they were trying to tear off chunks of her scalp. Believing she was dying, she was dragged along the square to where the crowd was stopped by a fence, alongside which a group of women were camping. One woman wearing a chador put her arms around Logan, and the others closed ranks around her, while some men who were with the women threw water at the crowd. A group of soldiers appeared, beat back the crowd with batons, and one of them threw Logan over his shoulder. She was flown back to the U.S. the next day, where she spent four days in the hospital. She was contacted by President Obama when she arrived home. CBS said it remained unclear who the attackers were, and unlikely that any will be prosecuted.

Comments about Afghanistan and Libya

In October 2012, Logan delivered a speech before the annual luncheon of the Better Government Association in which she sharply criticized the Obama Administration's statements about the War in Afghanistan and other conflicts in the Arab world. In particular, Logan criticized the Obama Administration's claims that the Taliban was weakening in Afghanistan, calling such claims "a major lie" made in preparation for ending the U.S.military role in that country. She also stated that she hoped that the United States would "exact revenge" for the 2012 Benghazi attack, in which U.S. diplomatic personnel were attacked and killed in Libya.

Benghazi report

On November 8, 2013, Logan went on CBS This Morning to apologize for an inaccurate 60 Minutes Benghazi, Libya report, which had aired October 27. She indicated that an investigation uncovered that the source of much of her reporting was inaccurate and blamed it on Dylan Davies, manager of the local guard force at the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi. Logan said he lied about information but insisted they looked into his credibility and relied on such things as photographs and documents he supplied. In hindsight, Logan said they learned that the story told by Davies didn't match what he told federal investigators. "You know the most important thing to every person at 60 Minutes is the truth," she said in the on-air apology on the morning show. "And today the truth is we made a mistake. And that's a..that's very disappointing for any journalist. That's very disappointing for me." Logan went on to add, "Nobody likes to admit they made a mistake. But if you do, you have to stand up and take responsibility - and you have to say you were wrong. And in this case we were wrong." She has been criticized for this apology, which some have seen as inadequate. On November 26, 2013, Logan was forced to take a leave of absence due to the errors in the Benghazi report.

See also

• Women in journalism and media professions