Featured Post

Click Here for Excerpts (and Reviews) for New Book

Friday, November 8, 2013

When Lara Logan Trashed Michael Hastings

Worth re-visiting the McChrystal backlash in light of, you know.  Matt Taibbi covered it in Rolling Stone in 2011 in one of his classics. Excerpt: 
I thought I'd seen everything when I read David Brooks saying out loud in a New York Times column that reporters should sit on damaging comments to save their sources from their own idiocy. But now we get CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan slamming our own Michael Hastings on CNN's "Reliable Sources" program, agreeing that the Rolling Stone reporter violated an "unspoken agreement" that journalists are not supposed to "embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter."
Anyone who wants to know why network television news hasn't mattered since the seventies just needs to check out this appearance by Logan. Here's CBS's chief foreign correspondent saying out loud on TV that when the man running a war that's killing thousands of young men and women every year steps on his own dick in front of a journalist, that journalist is supposed to eat the story so as not to embarrass the flag. And the part that really gets me is Logan bitching about how Hastings was dishonest to use human warmth and charm to build up enough of a rapport with his sources that they felt comfortable running their mouths off in front of him....
As to this whole "unspoken agreement" business: the reason Lara Logan thinks this is because she's like pretty much every other "reputable" journalist in this country, in that she suffers from a profound confusion about who she's supposed to be working for. I know this from my years covering presidential campaigns, where the same dynamic applies. Hey, assholes: you do not work for the people you're covering! Jesus, is this concept that fucking hard?

3 comments:

Guy Montag said...

"Worth re-visiting the McChrystal backlash ..."

For more details on "Le'Affair Rolling Stan" see the June 2013 post,“MORE LIES BORNE OUT BY FACTS, IF NOT THE TRUTH” -- The New York Time‟s Disingenuous Obituary of Michael Hastings & Their Whitewash of Gen. Stanley McChrystal‟s Role in “Le‟Affair Rolling Stan” & “The Pat Tillman Story, at the Feral Firefighter blog.

The Author said...

Thank you, Greg. It would be my utmost pleasure to hear and see the last of Lara Logan with her little girl voice that has never fooled me into giving her the slightest credibility.

Anonymous said...

I think the evidence is mounting that they do work for the corporations and institutions they're covering.

Frank Church's investigations into Operation Mockingbird were concluded but the program simply got renamed and went underground.