CBS News released a statement on Tuesday concerning veteran war reporter Lara Logan, which read, in full, as follows:
On Friday, Feb. 11, the day Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a 60 Minutes story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy.
In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently in the hospital recovering.
(CBS News, February 15, 2011)
This is awful, and I wish Logan a speedy recovery.
But I submit that the only reason it is coming as such a shock is that almost every Western reporter and commentator made it seem as though the protests in Egypt were being carried out by a bunch of boy scouts. No doubt some would now have you believe that this assault was perpetrated by Mubarak supporters who infiltrated the protesters’ celebrations to exact revenge on this reporter as payback for Western governments abandoning their president….
By contrast, I duly noted that it was these protesters, not Mubarak’s camel-riding thugs, who were responsible for the burning and looting that destroyed so much of Cairo. Therefore, it comes as no shock to me that their pillaging extended to raping this attractive, blonde reporter – who must have stood out like a stranded gazelle in the midst of a pride of lions.
[P]rotesters duly fanned out from mosques all over the country shouting ‘Mubarak must go!’ More daringly, they defied police and security forces by hurling rocks and setting buildings and cars on fire with relative impunity.
(“Egypt on fire, The iPINIONS Journal,” January 31, 2011)
That said, I found the CBS statement somewhat ambiguous because it is not clear from it, or any other reporting, that Logan was actually raped. Since, to be brutally frank, a “sustained sexual assault” could entail lots of aggressive fondling without any penetration: still horrific to be sure, but a gang rape (as the statement implies) it is not.
In any case, reports are that this mother of a 14-month-old child is now recovering comfortably at home, but is determined to get back to covering unfolding protests across the Middle East within weeks. Which suggests that she is psychologically disassociated not just from her body, but from her maternal instincts as well….
This is not to suggest, however, that women reporters should not be covering this story, which could turn out to be the most significant political development since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. For not only should they, but some, like Christiane Amanpour of ABC who snagged the only interview with President Mubarak as he was being deposed, are acquitting themselves as far better reporters than men.
I just find it more than a little peculiar that a mother would be so eager to get so far away from her practically new-born child to cover this story with all of the obvious dangers it entails.
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