Thursday, February 17, 2011

CBS Covered Up Gang Rape Of Female Correspondent By Egyptian Protesters

CBS News wanted Americans to think so highly of the protesters who took to the streets to demand the ouster of long-time American ally and supporter of peace initiatives in the Middle East Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that they were willing to ignore the brutal gang rape of their own correspondent by Muslim protesters who mistakenly thought she was Jewish. The Boston Herald's Michael Graham calls out the left-leaning news organization:

“[60 Minutes] correspondent Lara Logan was repeatedly sexually assaulted by thugs yelling, ‘Jew! Jew!’ as she covered the chaotic fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo’s main square Friday.”


Powerful reporting on an important story. Two problems: It didn’t run until yesterday, and CBS didn’t run it. The quote is from the New York Post. And it was The Wall Street Journal that reported “the separation and assault lasted roughly 20 to 30 minutes.”

But CBS? They sat on their own story. For five days, as reporters reveled amid giddy celebrations in Tahrir Square, and as President Obama praised President Obama’s handling of the Egyptian crisis, CBS reported nothing.


Only when other media had the story did CBS break the news that its own chief foreign correspondent was the victim of “a brutal and sustained sexual assault.”

Five days of silence — not even “60 Minutes” coverage of the Egypt story. No mention of the “mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy” who attacked their own reporter.

How is that not news?

Some women journalists, like WGBH’s Callie Crossley, complain that CBS should never have reported the story, that Logan should be treated like a rape victim in the United States. But I’m with liberal columnist Richard Cohen of The Washington Post:

“The sexual assault of a woman in the middle of a public square is a story  . . .  particularly because the crowd in Tahrir Square was almost invariably characterized as friendly and out for nothing but democracy,” Cohen wrote.

Watching the same complicit media we all saw, Cohen notes most journalists covered the mobs “as if they were reporting from Times Square on New Year’s Eve, stopping only at putting on a party hat.”

Even CBS’s own statement said Logan was “covering the jubilation” and was attacked “amidst the celebration.”

Having 200 “good guys” gang assault a female reporter while screaming “Jew! Jew!” doesn’t fit the narrative. Is that why CBS sat on the story?

Or is it the cultural issue? A rape in a bar is a sex crime. But a pack of political protesters who rape a “Jew” in public is a story about culture.

Rapes happen everywhere, it’s true. And political protests are a global phenomenon, too. But as Slate.com’s Rachel Larimore says, “there’s a huge difference between flipping over a truck and spraying friends with beer and prying a woman away from her security detail and sexually assaulting her.”

Larimore wonders if “Logan’s attack [is] an anomaly, or is it to be expected from men raised in a culture that treats women as lesser citizens?”
For some reason I doubt the media coverage of an incident of this nature would have been quite so absent or passive if the perpetrators had been, oh let's say, Tea Party protestors or right wing Christians, as opposed to members of the religion of peace.

9 comments:

Concerned Taxpayer said...

Why should we be surprised. We know the MSM is a lapdog for the left.

Wilson46201 said...

Ooga booga!
Swarthy men raping our white blond women!
Ooga booga!

(straight out of the KKK playbook for 150 years. Shame on you!)

Gary R. Welsh said...

You're a sick man, Wilson. A very sick man. Did you confer with Andre before running with that?

Bob said...

Wow!

So this indecent is somehow framed in terms of Left/Right how?!?

Look, it's a terrible thing that happened to this reporter.

That said, most news organizations don't like to become part of the story - they are there to report the story, not become part of it. It's called professional journalism.

The story here is the overthrow of a government.

What I think is sick is trying to score political points off of this reporter's tragedy.

Gary R. Welsh said...

CNN's Anderson Cooper immediately reported on the beating he and his crew suffered. He fled the country fearing for his life, particularly because he was a gay reporter in a Muslim country. If you want to talk about a reporter constantly trying to become a part of the story, check out the activities of controversial local radio talk show host Abdul Hakim Shabazz. The American people are constantly being lied to by the mainstream media about this religion. Every day they remind us of how we should fear the Christian right, but when it comes to how Islam is practiced in any country in this world, we are only fed a whitewashed version of what it truly is.

Bob said...

Dude... you are really foaming at the mouth.

It's a pretty big leap to decide that professional editing decisions were a "cover up" and that they were done for political motives. The reporter herself may not have wanted her personal tragedy to become news. I sure as hell wouldn't want that.

The only real political motives here are yours - to cast the Islam in a bad light (and I'm not arguing the merits of that). But that's not the story here - you are trying to make that the story. You have this whole big argument in your head that has absolutely nothing to do with this story.

I don't give a rat's ass about Shabazz and his radio program. What in the hell does he have to do with anything?!? You are totally obsessed with a two-bit radio show host.

The only reason that Anderson Cooper's incident was newsworthy at all was because it was part of a coordinated effort to attack the media. News Flash... as personally tragic as it is that a reporter was beat up (or raped) it's not about him or her.

Downtown Indy said...

It doesn't seem to me the story was covered up. It was not examined in gory, tasteless, minute detail like most others.

That is fine with me. And it's rather kind to the reporter, too.

Gary R. Welsh said...

President Obama sent his top CIA intelligence officer on Egypt up to the Hill to brief Congress. He insisted the Muslim Brotherhood, which was instrumental in organizing the demonstrations in Cairo, were secular-oriented and not tied to radical elements of Islam. His comments were so unfounded that his superiors had to repudiate his remarks and clarify his testimony before the day was over so as to safe face for the rapidly deteriorating credibility of the CIA. It is newsworthy because normal protesters are tickled pink when reporters show up to cover their demonstrations. The favorable coverage of them by American news reporters could not have been better. What does it say when they turn on the people who were helping spread their propaganda to the masses in this country, particularly when President Obama was doing all he could to aid them in the quick ouster of Mubarak? I do agree with your assessment of Abdul as a two-bit radio show host.

Dr. Ferris said...

Yeah. Right. "Ooga booga". We shouldn't bring up the rape of an American woman by Egyptians, because that makes us out to be racists.

Call us what you like. The fact is that the incident still happened. Apparently the reason behind it was that the Egyptian males wished to make a public statement regarding their opinion of Jews (given the chants accompanying the gang rape).

At least these individuals are making themselves quite clear regarding their opinion of the Camp David Accords. Similarly, the images of dancing West Bank and Gaza residents on September 11 of 2001 made clear the local opinion of Arabs regarding the US. The mainstream media, I assume because of their liberal agenda, would prefer us to absorb a depiction of these people that wildly diverges from the truth - but, from time to time, that truth comes out in very ugly ways. This gang rape is one such incident.

"Ooga booga".

Mind, I would suggest the shame lies elsewhere - but my experience is that the responsible faction is entiurely shameless. Neither this, nor any other evidence, no matter how blatant, will deter them from their self-serving ideological worldview.