Controversy Surrounds Lara Logan’s Haifa Street Report

Last week we published an e-mail received from embedded CBS News reporter Lara Logan; the Internet answered the call and saw the footage CBS had kept off the air due to what they characterized as excessive graphic violence.

A few days after the story broke here on MediaChannel, some of our commenters (including Alphabet City’s Robert Stevens) linked to Nibras Kazimi, blogger and fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative thinktank, who noticed that the footage bore a unique resemblance to footage which was being put on the Internet by a Al-Qaeda allied terrorist group calling themselves “Islamic State of Iraq.”

The Associated Press ran an article yesterday by media writer David Bauder about a Mediachannel report that Lara Logan of CBS News lobbied friends to try to get the network to air a news segment from Iraq that was only posted on the CBS website, but never broadcast. Her email, not intended for public consumption, was labeled “HELP.” Bauder wrote:

NEW YORK — News reporters frequently complain that their work isn’t getting the attention it deserves, but CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan took the extra step.

She wrote to friends and family members asking for their help in getting her report on street fighting in Baghdad on the air. She never, the network said Wednesday, intended to make the plea public. But eventually it got out.

Logan filed the gritty report about dangerous conditions near the Green Zone on Jan. 18 for the “CBS Evening News.” The network didn’t air it, deeming some of the images of tortured bodies that it contained too graphic, and because another story Logan filed that day from Iraq was more newsworthy, said Sandy Genelius, news spokeswoman.

Instead, the report was streamed on the news division’s Web site. It ends with an Iraqi blaming the United States for the “death and destruction” brought to the country.

Shortly after, Logan wrote her e-mail, telling friends the story was largely being ignored, even though the violence was happening every single day in Baghdad. Her message was titled: “Help.”

“I would be very grateful if any of you have a chance to watch this story and pass the link on to as many people as you know possible,” she wrote. “It should be seen. And people should know about this.”

She asked her recipients to send a comment to CBS, a division of CBS Corp., to show that people were interested, and that they believed her report was not too gruesome to air.

Someone who got the e-mail sent it to Rory O’Connor, who wrote about it on the watchdog Web site Mediachannel.org and the liberal site AlterNet.

Logan did not immediately respond to an e-mail request to speak about her note, instead sending it to Genelius. Genelius said that any internal discussions with Logan about the propriety of her message would remain internal.

“One of the characteristics that Lara has that makes her a good reporter is passion for what she does and that’s a very healthy thing,” Genelius said.

There are no plans to air the report, she said.

“It’s pretty much yesterday’s news for everyone here,” she said.

Now Hot Air, a site which describes itself as “the world’s first full-service conservative Internet broadcast network,” has released a video wherein the site’s founder, Michelle Malkin, labels MediaChannel a “left-wing site” and accuses Logan of being a terrorist mouthpiece based on the similarity of footage:

She also deserves close scrutiny for agenda-driven reporting that some bloggers believe has incorporated uncredited Al-Qaeda propaganda. On the left-wing MediaChannel.org website last week, supporters of Logan published a mass e-mail she had sent out, asking for help.
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Let’s take a look again at that gruesome footage. Nibras Kazimi, a Hudson Institute scholar and blogger at Talisman Gate, noticed something familiar about the video. It matched up with an 8 minute video published online January 7th, 11 days before Logan’s reoport, by an Al-Qaeda propaganda arm under the title ‘Some of the Casualties of the Heretics in Haifa Street After Sunday’s Fighting, January 7, 2007, in Baghdad.’

Malkin quotes Kazimi on his blog, where he asks, “if it’s not off the Al-Qaeda video, then how did [Lara Logan] get footage identical to the one used by Al-Qaeda?” This is an excellent question.

CBS says the source was verified but their identity kept from the public for fear of the source’s safety, which doesn’t make it sound as if the leak was an official PR move by the Islamic State of Iraq. CBS spokesperson Sandy Genelius told MediaChannel,

“CBS news identifies the sources of video, as you can see on virtually any night’s broadcast, no matter who that is — it could be a U.S. government video, an Iraqi government video, video from an Al Qaeda website, video from a jihadist website, etc. Occasionally, identifying a video source could put someone’s life in danger. In that case, we do not identify the source. Such was the case with this video.

And, in the event you haven’t seen this yourself, the same video from Iraq often shows up in multiple places. as we have seen this week in the case of the video of the attack on Najaf, all three networks (and countless websites, I’m sure) used the same cel phone video of that attack. Many, many people in Iraq shoot video and send it to many, many places.”

So it is just as likely, ceteris paribus, that both CBS and Al-Furqan were sold a video which entrepreneurs had been circulating for weeks, a possibility Hot Air’s article on the controversy admits. Without verifiying the original source of the video, it is impossible to determine its original provenance. The only video which can unequivocably be said to come from the terrorists is that 8-minute footage which bears the Al-Furqan logo (which we have tastefully blurred out of our screen-grab of the Vent video at left).

Malkin is trying to spin the story to argue that Logan and CBS are anti-American. She falsely labels MediaChannel a “left-wing website” and argues that Logan’s “agenda-driven reporting” is proof of her mendacity.

Ironically, Hot Air is the only Western media organization which did run the full Al-Furqan video with logo intact — while denouncing CBS for airing what it claimed was an excerpt.

“There is blatant hypocrisy on all sides on this issue,” says Danny Schechter, who edits MediaChannel.org. “First, there is CBS which could be doing a much better job reporting the war, downplaying an important story by their own correspondent who felt forced to beg internally for help to get it seen. Then there’s the phony anti-America media baiting by Malkin who is quick to characterize others without admitting her own pro-war bias and then ignoring the fact that a terrorist video ran in full on a website she often appears on.”

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“…Malkin who is quick to characterize others without admitting her own pro-war bias…”

Danny Schechter is way, way, way, WAY off the mark. Malkin does more than wear her affilations on her sleeves, she wear t-shirts with conservative messages!

And, are you guys sure you haven’t confused some of Michelle’s coverage with Bryan Preston’s? I know Bryan works for Michelle, but they are different people! :)