A Journalist's cry for "help" attracts bloggers to criticize terrorist video

CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan submitted a report on street fighting in Baghdad, which was not aired on Katie Couric's broadcast, but was posted to the web. Logan was disappointed and took the matter into her own hands - emailing friends and family that they should check out the web posting and write to CBS News that they felt the piece should have been aired. The subject line of her email was "help".

The Mediachannel.org blog took a multiple-viewpoint stab at the surrounding "controversy." However, I question whether it wasn't a little inappropriate for Logan to ask friends to lobby for her work. On the one hand, she's clearly passionate about the story, but on the other hand, the content of the story is so controversial it makes her seem biased.

Controversy Surrounds Lara Logan's Haifa Street Report


Another issue that has been brought up is whether Logan's piece contained Al Qaeda footage... CBS says they got it from an anonymous source.... not Al Qaeda.... although the tapes seem to match.

The website Hotair.com had this to say:
"In addition to using video that also showed up in an Al Qaeda video, Logan failed to acknowledge that Al Qaeda is claiming responsibility for the violence on Haifa Street... They show the same Iraqi Army casualty, because they’re from the same video. Not a similar video. The same video."

Lara Logan and her Terrorist Footage


I don't think Al Qaeda footage should ever be used in a news broadcast - especially considering that CBS News has correspondents and crews on the ground in Iraq... I'm hard pressed to find a reason why the footage would be used, and unattributed, to boot.

LT