Lara Logan the sellout?

At least that's the impression I get from those who saw the 60 Minutes interview with Eric Prince, notorious owner of Blackwater. How I remember that Lara Logan was the golden girl of the media according to a good number of folks here...for her no-nonsense, fluff-free and honest approach in news reporting. Well, according to a few, she's a sellout! She didn't crucify Eric Prince. She might as well have compared shoe stories with Eric while giggling about apple pie. She's no longer the golden girl. Too many silver coins now, eh. Tsk, she's scum now.

Anyway, I'll reiterate my thoughts that were written on a different thread:

I didn't think that this was a puffball piece by Lara Logan. She actually brought up the major criticisms about Blackwater to Erik Prince's face: a) the reputation as overly aggressive trigger-happy Rambos, b) Iraq wanting them out, c) the USA military REFUTING Blackwater's accounts...this is FUCKING huge and d) 60 minutes indicating that they could not independently verify Blackwater's account...INSTEAD of buying it hook, line and sinker. You could see Erik Prince stammering at places, especially when confronted with the USA military's dispute of his POV. I didn't think he came off looking that great.

Sure it wasn't a comprehensive damnation of Blackwater that PBS's Frontline and CBC's The Fifth Estate would do...but no way was it a sell-out interview that Katie Couric would do.

and no talks with any alternate sources. Very one-sided journalism. Anyone can do an interview. But just doing an interview is lazy. Checking statements in an interview by talking to others -- that's what was missing. And that's why the Lara Logan piece wasn't journalism

However, one important piece of information. This interview was conducted 2 days ago...not weeks or months ago which is the norm for many features. True, they could have gotten at least one other person at the last minute. Hopefully, they will do a more in-depth feature on Blackwater and bring in more angles from other people and other sources.

and their families which I have seen on CNNI and TRN. Lara really fucked up big time. Yet I expect CBS got some cash from BW for this.

:grr:

Video interview of one victim...


http://www.therealnews.com/web/index.php?thisdataswitch=0&thisid=449&thisview=item

now how hard would it be for Lara to find this??

:(

to post pone his until they ran their segment--i would really like to know why. Anyhow i think Charlie's piece will be on tomorrow night.

would just say "Fuck that then, we'll do a real investigation on you and your company, see ya asshat" Course that will never happen.

... but the fact that Prince is probably not granting many interviews does make for a more exclusive story for a news organization. In this case it probably would have been better to do a more in-depth investigation and contact Prince before airing it to see if he would like to be interviewed or add any comments.

The decision to actually do the interview was likely made by the editorial staff or higher ups. They were probably overly eager to get an interview and felt whatever conditions they agreed to were acceptable to get the story. Perhaps that was the wrong decision in this case.

Personally I thought much of the reporting that Lara Logan has done from Iraq and Afghanistan was excellent. Anyone willing to spend an extended period of time there to report on the situation has earned my respect.

- Make7