Lara Logan asked to take leave of absence from 60 Minutes

Lara Logan asked to take leave of absence from 60 Minutes

by Steveningen 

 

Well, finally. Chairman of CBS News and executive producer of 60 Minutes Jeff Fager, in a lengthy memo and outline of their findings from an internal investigation, has asked Lara Logan and producer Max McClellan to take a leave of absence from the program.

By now most of you have received the report from Al Ortiz about the problems with the 60 Minutes story on Benghazi. There is a lot to learn from this mistake for the entire organization. We have rebuilt CBS News in a way that has dramatically improved our reporting abilities. Ironically 60 Minutes, which has been a model for those changes, fell short by broadcasting a now discredited account of an important story, and did not take full advantage of the reporting abilities of CBS News that might have prevented it from happening.
As a result, I have asked Lara Logan, who has distinguished herself and has put herself in harm’s way many times in the course of covering stories for us, to take a leave of absence, which she has agreed to do. I have asked the same of producer Max McClellan, who also has a distinguished career at CBS News.

Al Ortiz, Executive Director of Standards and Practices, lists 10 paragraphs outlining the series of events that led 60 Minutes to invite Dylan Davies on the program under the false pretense that he was an eyewitness to the Benghazi attack. His story quickly unraveled and left CBS red-faced over the shoddy journalism involved. Logan should have been fired, but this is a start.
Huffington Post's Michael Calderone has the full memo and findings here.