CBS has suspended its news correspondent, Lara Logan for an erroneous 60 Minutes report about the attack on a US diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, according to USA Today. Also suspended was the segment’s producer Max McClellan.
CBS News chairman Jeff Fager regretted the incident saying that “the deception got through and it shouldn’t have.” Logan and McClellan had ran the interview in October with a security contractor known as Dylan Davies giving an eyewitness account of the deadly attack on the U.S mission in Benghazi. The security guard told Logan that he had violated his employer’s orders to stay away from the compound and fought off a militant at the facility. Davies also said that he had seen U.S Ambassador, Christopher Stevens, who was one of four Americans killed in the attack, at a local hospital. FBI later discredited Davies after he told the FBI and his employer that he was in fact nowhere near the scene.
Ms Logan later called it a mistake. The network acknowledged that more thorough investigations should have been done. After a review of the incident, CBS News director of standards Al Ortiz concluded that the mistake was preventable had Logan and McClellan utilized CBS News resources to authenticate the sources. “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,” Ortiz said
“There is a lot to learn from this mistake for the entire organization,” said the chairman in an email communicated to the CBS News employees. “As executive producer, I am responsible for what gets on the air. I pride myself in catching almost everything, but this deception got through, and it shouldn’t have.”
(image via Wikipedia)