Lara Logan Makes The Case for Citizen Journalists

Ed Murrow does the cheesecake shot in Korea…

Over the last 3 days Apple sold 1.7 million iPhone 4s.  That  means that, in effect, there are now 1.7 million more video camera/edit software/upload units in the world than there were last Wednesday.

And it’s just the beginning.

Now we’re really entering the era of the Citizen Journalist – a time when anyone, anywhere, with any story to tell, can shoot, edit and upload that story to the rest of the world.

It’s a big change. Some might say it’s the first time we’ve had a really ‘free press’.

Others might argue that conventional journalists are under fire; that we must be wary of “Citizen Journalists” because they aren’t professional and how can we trust what they might report.

That fear was laid to rest yesterday by an astonishing interview with Lara Logan, CBS News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent.

In an interview with CNN’s Howard Kurtz, Logan attacked Michael Hastings’ piece in Rolling Stone, and then, astonishingly said that she ‘corrects’ her reporting, repressing anything anti military so that “they will let you back”.

CNN’s Howard Kurtz queried Logan if there is an “unspoken agreement that you’re not going to embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “Yes… there is an element of trust.”

What Logan is saying–in the shameful code of embedded journalism–is that she and her former colleagues in Afghanistan have been systemically engaged in a journalistic cover-up in their reporting on the longest war in U.S. history, one in which more than 30,000 human lives have been lost, including more than 1,000 Americans and an untold number of Afghani civilians.

This is just breathtaking.

And right up there with all of Stanley McChrystal’s comments.

On the record.

Logan is stating, quite baldly, that she will bend the news, doctor it, so that she will not annoy the military so that they will let her keep coming back.

This is not journalism.

This is PR.

This is also a vast departure from the days when David Halberstam was willing to annoy the Nixon administration with his fearless and totally truthful reporting from Vietnam. So much so that Nixon put pressure on Punch Sulzberger to remove Halberstam from Vietnam.  Halberstam was at the end of hist our of duty anyway, but Punch re-upped him for another year.

That was journalism

Logan’s reporting is not reporting. It is just crap. Garbage. Not to be trusted.

She is nothing but a shill for the US Military.

Nothing more.

And ironically, in submitting to an interview with Howard Kurtz and letting it all hang out for the public to see, she has now been placed in exactly the same position as Stanley McChrystal.

The only difference here is that the President fired Gen McChrystal after the story was published.

CBS News lacks the basic integrity that Obama has shown.

They will not fire Lara Logan.

Instead, they will continue to air her PR as ‘news’, debasing not only CBS News, but the entire profession.

If this is professional journalism, Bring On The Amateurs!

The fact that CBS News puts its name and reputation (or what is left of it) on this crap is equally astonishing.

All of which takes us to Citizen Journalism

If the professional vastly overpaid journalists want to make the case that only they and their reporting can be trusted, Logan has blown that argument to smithereens.

Give me a dozen Citizen Journalists with iPhones over one Lara Logan. In fact, at her salary, you could pay about 10,000 Citizen Journalists to do what she obviously cannot do – deliver honest journalism

About the author

mrosenblum - For more than 20 years, Mr. Rosenblum has been on the cutting edge of the digital ‘videojournalist’ revolution. During this time, he has lead a drive for videoliteracy, and the complete rethinking of how television is made and controlled. His work has included: The complete transitioning of The BBC's national network (UK) to a VJ-driven model, starting in 2002. The complete conversion of The Voice of America, the United State’s Government’s broadcasting agency, (and the largest broadcaster in the world), from short wave radio to television broadcasting and webcasting using the ‘VJ” paradigm (1998-present). The construction of NYT Television, a New York Times Company, and the largest producer of non-fiction television in the US. Rosenblum was both the founder and President of NYT TV, (all based on the “VJ” paradigm – 1996-1998). The President and Founder of Video News International, a global VJ-driven newsgathering company, with more than 100 journalists around the world. (1993-1996).