By Kevin Foley
"Foreign correspondent" has always had a romantic and courageous ring, invoking the nobility of Edward R. Murrow reporting from London even as German bombs rained down on the city; tough and intrepid reporters in pursuit of the truth, their personal safety an afterthought.
So it was we were shocked to learn that Lara Logan, as hardnosed a TV journalist as there is, was attacked and sexually assaulted during the celebration in Cairo following the departure of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak.
Having already been detained by Mubarak’s thugs, Logan was doing her job when she waded into the crowd in Tahrir Square where, no doubt, assorted low-lifes had infiltrated the jubilant throng. She probably thought she was safe given the euphoria but she brought security nevertheless.
According to reports, a crowd of men descended on Logan, her video crew and, most important, her security detail and she suddenly found herself alone. The same reports say the beating and sexual assault that followed were brutal, lasting nearly a half-hour before Egyptian women and soldiers rescued the reporter. Logan was whisked out of the country by her employer, CBS News, and remains hospitalized in serious condition.
The usual suspects blamed the victim, suggesting Logan invited the assault. Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft, a male model who’s never seen combat, gutlessly posted, "Her liberal belief system almost got her killed."
Hoft evidently doesn’t understand that real journalism, unlike blogging right wing stupidity from the safety of a St. Louis office, has always been a dangerous profession. In order to understand what’s really happening somebody actually has to get into the middle of the...story.
Many times, other somebodies don’t want them there.
Ernie Pyle, the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist who brought combat to life for his readers, reported from the European and Pacific theaters during World War II. He was killed by Japanese machine gun fire in the closing days of the war.
Marguerite Higgins of the New York Herald Tribune, another Pulitzer Prize winner, landed with the Marines at Inchon, Korea, amid bullets and mortar rounds. When Army brass objected to a woman in combat, Douglas MacArthur declared, "Marguerite Higgins is held in the highest professional esteem by everyone." Higgins would go on to report from Vietnam, where she contracted the disease that prematurely killed her.
More recently, Bob Woodruff of ABC News and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were both nearly killed in Iraq by an improvised explosive device while reporting from Baghdad.
Of the 44 journalists killed in 2010, 27 were murdered. The rest were killed when they were caught in gun battles.
Two of the five journalists killed so far in 2011 died in the liberation unrest in Tunisia and Egypt. Some 850 journalists have been killed since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Logan is no neophyte. The South African was in Afghanistan not long after 9-11 reporting for the BBC. Like Higgins before her, Logan’s reputation for professionalism and fairness quickly grew among her male colleagues.
Unlike Hoft, she’s been in one hot spot after another ever since. Logan’s reports on CBS News and "60 Minutes" have always been dispassionate and incisive, avoiding spin, presenting the facts and letting the viewer decide.
In other words, she’s what journalists are supposed to be in the best tradition of her CBS antecedents, Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevareid, and Walter Cronkite, all of whom would be proud of her.
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Kevin
Foley is president of KEF
Media Associates, an Atlanta-based producer and distributor
of sponsored news content to television and radio media. |