Lara Loghan And Producer of CBS To Take Leave Of Absence After the ’60 Minutes’ Benghazi Reporting Outrage
CBS confirmed Tuesday that Lara Logan, correspondent of the discredited report about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya will take a leave of absence from work.
Max McClellan, who is Logan's producer, is also taking leave of absence. CBS remarked that the leaves of absence were measure for the discredited Benghazi reporting on Logan's show "60 Minutes." The staff announcement and an internal review suggested that CBS figured what went wrong with the report and taken appropriate measures to avoid the mistakes in the future.
CBS News spokesman said, "The '60 Minutes' journalistic review is concluded, and we are implementing ongoing changes based on its results," reported by CNN.
The network declined to comment when Logan will return to work. She has not talked publicly since she apologized Nov. 10 about the Benghazi report. But she was slated to host a high-profile fund-raising event for the Committee to Protect Journalists. Scott Pelley of "CBS Evening News" is going to take up her role on CBS.
Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and executive producer of "60 Minutes," asked Logan and McClellan to take leaves of absence.
Fager mentioned that it was not Logan but him who was responsible for the Benghazi report scandal Oct. 27.
"I pride myself in catching almost everything, but this deception got through and it shouldn't have," Fager said.
Media Matters, the liberal media monitoring group, applauded CBS' steps. Media Matters was the first to criticize Logan's report about Benghazi.
""From the start of this controversy, Media Matters has demanded that CBS review the flawed '60 Minutes' report and take appropriate action. Today, the network has done that," David Brock, chairman of Media Matters said.
The discredited report about Benghazi incident was the interview with Dylan Davies, who was the security contractor in Benghazi on the night of the attack. The attack left four Americans dead, including Amb. Christopher Stevens. Davies mentioned in the interview that he was there in the compound on that night which contradictws his statement given to the FBI.
Logan apologized for the missteps, "We were wrong."
The head of standards and practices for CBS, Al Ortiz shared in the internal review, "This crucial point - his admission that he had not told his employer the truth about his own actions - should have been a red flag in the editorial vetting process."
Ortiz also mentioned that the "60 Minutes" staff did disclose the details of the interview.
"The fact that the FBI and the State Department had information that differed from the account Davies gave to '60 Minutes' was knowable before the piece aired," Ortiz stated.
"But the wider reporting resources of CBS News were not employed in an effort to confirm his account. It's possible that reporters and producers with better access to inside FBI sources could have found out that Davies had given varying and conflicting accounts of his story."