Media Matters Punches Back At Lara Logan’s Podcast Interview Slamming “Liberal” Media
Lara Logan, who took a leave of absence from CBS News after her botched Benghazi report on 60 Minutes in 2013, is back in the spotlight this week. She gave an interview to a conservative podcast in which she compared Breitbart and Fox News to put-upon women who have but “this tiny little spot” at which to pray in front of Israel’s Wailing Wall while the rest is given over to the men — aka “liberal” media including “CBS, ABC, NBC, Huffington Post, Politico, whatever,” she said.
During a lengthy interview published Friday with podcaster and former Navy SEAL Mike Ritland, Logan said she was committing “professional suicide” by speaking out on that platform. Others suggested off the record that Logan maybe was auditioning for a job among the news outlets at that tiny Wailing Wall spot.
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Media Matters maybe agrees, noting her remarks “have rocketed through the pro-Trump ecosystem, making their way to Fox News, with right-wing commentators praising her for describing the media as ‘mostly liberal.'”
In some early coverage of her interview on the Mike Drop podcast (watch it below), she was identified as a current CBS News correspondent; she has not been with the network for several months, according to a division rep.
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Media Matters has a bone to pick with Logan over her podcast interview, conducted last weekend, saying she downplayed the “massive journalistic failure” that led to the retraction of her 60 Minutes report on the 2012 Benghazi attack — which, in turn, led to her own lengthy leave of absence from the news operation. She returned six months later.
In the podcast interview, Logan blames a bad-faith effort by Media Matters. The watchdog responded Tuesday afternoon, calling her remarks “an embarrassing effort by a journalist to slough off responsibility for what she had previously acknowledged was her own substantial error.”
In the interview for Mike Drop — which is billed as “the podcast where relevancy is irrelevant and we don’t give a shit about your feelings” — Logan suggested she had been smeared after her report on the September 11, 2012, attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, because she previously gave a speech acknowledging disbelief of the Obama administration’s initial assertion the attack began as a spontaneous protest.
Her “random” comment during a 90-minute presentation was used to say she was biased and should not have reported on Benghazi, she said in the podcast, claiming Media Matters targeted her.
Logan had based portions of her October 27, 2013, Benghazi report for 60 Minutes on claims of a purported “eyewitness” to the attacks, who turned out to have fabricated portions of his story. Media Matters was among the orgs to write about the botched reporting, as did The New York Times and Washington Post.
After CBS investigated and retracted the report, Logan made two on-air apologies, telling 60 Minutes viewers she was “misled, and it was a mistake” to have included the source in the report. “For that, we are very sorry,” she added.
“The most important thing to every person at 60 Minutes is the truth, and the truth is, we made a mistake,” she said back then.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Media Matters responded to her podcast interview, saying: “With regard to this particular 60 Minutes report, she didn’t do her job, so we did ours. It is shameful for her to deny responsibility for her work and embarrassing for her to pretend that she was smeared.”
Here is Logan’s Mike Drop interview in its entirely:
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