Lara Logan

In late January 2007, Logan filed a report of fighting along Haifa Street in Baghdad, but the CBS Evening News did not run the report; deeming it "a bit strong".[13][14] To reverse the decision, Logan enlisted public support; requesting them to watch the story and pass the link to as many of their friends and acquaintances as possible, saying "It should be seen".[14][15]

Logan was criticized in June 2010 for her remarks about another journalist, Michael Hastings, and her view that reporters who embed with the military ought not to write about the general banter they hear. An article by Hastings in Rolling Stone that month quoted General Stanley A. McChrystal and his staff—comments Hastings overheard while traveling with McChrystal—criticizing U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden and other officials, after which President Obama fired McChrystal as his commander in Afghanistan.[16][17] Logan told CNN that Hastings' reporting had violated an unspoken agreement between reporters who travel with military personnel not to report casual comments that pass between them.[18]

Quoting her statement, "I mean, the question is, really, is what General McChrystal and his aides are doing so egregious, that they deserved to end a career like McChrystal's? I mean, Michael Hastings has never served his country the way McChrystal has." CNN's former chief military correspondent, Jamie McIntyre, said that what they did was indeed egregious, and that her comments "unfortunately reinforced the worst stereotype of reporters who 'embed' with senior military officers but are actually 'in bed' with them."[19] He went on to quote Admiral Mike Mullen's statement that military personnel must be neutral and should not criticize civilian leaders.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon wrote that she had done courageous reporting over the years, but had come to see herself as part of the government and military.[20]

Logan and her CBS crew were arrested and detained for one night by the Egyptian Army on 3 February 2011, while covering the Egyptian revolution. She said the crew was blindfolded and handcuffed at gunpoint, and their driver beaten. They were advised to leave the country, but were later released.[21][22]

On 15 February 2011, CBS News released a statement that Logan had been beaten and sexually assaulted on 11 February, while covering the celebrations in Tahrir Square following Hosni Mubarak's resignation.[23] CBS 60 Minutes broadcast an interview with her about it on 1 May 2011; she said she was speaking out because of the prevalence of mass sexual assault in Egypt, and to break the silence about the sexual violence women reporters are reluctant to report in case it prevents them from doing their jobs.[24][25][26][27]

She said the incident involved 200 to 300 men and lasted around 25 minutes. She had been reporting the celebrations for an hour without incident when her camera battery failed. One of the Egyptian CBS crew suggested they leave, telling her later he heard the crowd make inappropriate sexual comments about her. She felt hands touching her, and can be heard shouting "stop", just as the camera died. One of the crowd shouted that she was an Israeli, a Jew, a claim that CBS said, though false, was a "match to gasoline". She went on to say that they tore off her clothes and, in her words, raped her with their hands, while taking photographs with their cellphones. They began pulling her body in different directions, pulling her hair so hard she said it seemed they were trying to tear off chunks of her scalp. Believing she was dying, she was dragged along the square to where the crowd was stopped by a fence, alongside which a group of women were camping. One woman wearing a chador put her arms around Logan, and the others closed ranks around her, while some men who were with the women threw water at the crowd. A group of soldiers appeared, beat back the crowd with batons, and one of them threw Logan over his shoulder. She was flown back to the U.S. the next day, where she spent four days in the hospital.[25][26] She was contacted by President Obama when she arrived home.[28] CBS said it remained unclear who the attackers were, and unlikely that any will be prosecuted.[25][26]

In October 2012, Logan delivered a speech before the annual luncheon of the Better Government Association in which she sharply criticized the Obama Administration's statements about the War in Afghanistan and other conflicts in the Arab world. In particular, Logan criticized the Obama Administration's claims that the Taliban was weakening in Afghanistan, calling such claims "a major lie" made in preparation for ending the U.S. military role in that country. She also stated that she hoped that the United States would "exact revenge" for the 2012 Benghazi attack, in which U.S. diplomatic personnel were attacked and killed in Libya.[29]

On 8 November 2013, Logan went on CBS This Morning to apologize for an inaccurate 60 Minutes report about the Benghazi attack, which had aired on 27 October. She indicated that an investigation uncovered that the source of much of her reporting was inaccurate and blamed it on Dylan Davies, manager of the local guard force at the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi. Logan said he lied about information but insisted they looked into his credibility and relied on such things as photographs and documents he supplied. In hindsight, Logan said they learned that the story told by Davies didn't match what he told federal investigators. "You know the most important thing to every person at 60 Minutes is the truth," she said in the on-air apology on the morning show. "And today the truth is we made a mistake. And that's ah ... that's very disappointing for any journalist. That's very disappointing for me." Logan went on to add, "Nobody likes to admit they made a mistake. But if you do, you have to stand up and take responsibility – and you have to say you were wrong. And in this case we were wrong."[30]

On 26 November 2013, Logan was forced to take a leave of absence due to the errors in the Benghazi report.[11][31] Al Ortiz, Executive Director of Standards and Practices for CBS News, wrote in a memo, "Logan made a speech in which she took a strong public position arguing that the U.S. Government was misrepresenting the threat from Al Qaeda, and urging actions that the U.S. should take in response to the Benghazi attack. From a CBS News Standards perspective, there is a conflict in taking a public position on the government’s handling of Benghazi and Al Qaeda, while continuing to report on the story."[32][33]

After leaving CBS News, Logan began to criticize the media which she said had a liberal bias.[34][6] She described journalists as "political activists" and "propagandists" against President Trump.[6] She said that by saying this she was doing something akin to "professional suicide."[6] Shortly thereafter, she joined the Sinclair Broadcast Group.[35][36]

In February 2019, Logan appeared in a three and a half hour video interview with former US Navy SEAL Mike Ritland. In a lengthy interview that covered a wide selection of topics, Logan depicted the US and larger world-wide news media as predominantly left-leaning, saying that some studies showed that 85% of the people working in the US Media voted for the Democratic ticket.[37]

In 2019, Logan described some of her experiences as a war correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan and an IED explosion that almost killed her when she was in a convoy in Afghanistan that also included Geraldo Rivera and his brother. When asked about media bias and the treatment of independent reporters, she answered, saying:[38]

If there are any independent (journalistic) voices out there, if there are any journalists who are not beating the same drum and giving the same talking points, then we pay the price....if they can't take down the substance of what you are saying, right, they can't go after the things that matter, so they smear you personally. They go after your integrity. They go after your reputation and they'll stop at nothing... I want to say this loudly and clearly to anybody who is listening...Nobody owns me. I'm not owned by the left. I'm not owned by the right.

In 2019, Logan was hired by Fox News to do a series of independent style shows called "Lara Logan has No Agenda." As reported in the LA Times, Logan said of the new assignment, that she could not "control the media landscape" and continued by saying, "What I can control is the work that I do. I’m going to do that the same way here the way I did it at ‘60 Minutes.’ To date nobody has tried to make me do anything other than that. Nobody.”[39]

The first episode of her show “Lara Logan Has No Agenda” looked at the subject of U.S. immigration enforcement on the southern U.S. border. It followed the duties of U.S. border agents who work along the Rio Grande border with Mexico. The episode also depicted dangers that undocumented migrants face. Attempting to sidestep the political controversy, the show tried to avoid taking a side in the political debates over immigration policy.[39]

On May 31, 2020, Logan tweeted a picture, which she claimed was an antifa riot instruction manual. The picture actually was an updated hoax dating to the 2015 Baltimore riots. On June 1, Logan tweeted a threat by the @ANTIFA_US Twitter account. The account turned out to be fake and linked to Identity Europa, a white nationalist organization. After being criticized for posting the hoaxes, Logan claimed that there was a campaign to "destroy" her, including by Media Matters for America.[40][41]

On June 4, 2020, Logan appeared on Hannity to claim that antifa was leaving "pallets of bricks" at protest sites in an attempt to stoke violence and destruction. Fact-checkers found that claims of bricks being left at protest sites were baseless. No one else reported seeing antifa trucks leaving pallets of bricks. Next, Logan promoted a June 5 joke tweet which linked antifa to juggalos and a "clown hierarchy". Logan instead focused on the portion of the tweet that mentioned a "traditional command structure" and argued that anarchists thus indeed had organizational structure.[41]