Lara Logan is an incredible journalist, with an incredible story. As a teenager, she was in the thick of anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa. As a reporter, she has been in the middle of violence in Afghanistan, Angola, the West Bank, and of course, Iraq for CBS.
A few months ago I saw her measured, but trenchant response to ludicrous questions by "Mistah" Kurtz, about Laura Ingraham's despicable comments regarding Iraq journalists supposedly hiding on their hotel balconies and failing to cover "good" news. Hard to believe that Kurtz devoted more than one program to that despicable theme.
Tonight, I ran across a response she made on Liberal Avenger to a comment by a troll there who called her a "Baghdad Hotel Squatter."
Here's an excerpt:
I just want you to know that I have never focussed on any particular aspect of the war in Iraq to drive an agenda.
I go there, at great risk like so many others, and I get out every day and talk to as many people as I can.
People who talk about `roof-top' journalism or hotel journalism really do not know what they are talking about. Firstly because many Iraqis come to our hotels to meet with us, from Sunni insurgents to tribal sheikhs to government soldiers, policemen, politicians, students, professors, lawyers, ordinary people, human rights activists and yes, even American Generals, embassy officials and State Dept representatives.
You can meet a lot of people in your hotel, but that still is not a substitute for getting out and seeing things for yourselves. All I want you and everyone else to know is that even in peaceful countries, journalists meet contacts, sources or conduct interviews in hotels. Think of the print reporter that builds en entire story over the phone - it happens all the time.
And when we do go out, we have to consider the safety of the people we go to meet. For many Iraqis, having western reporters show up at your door can be a death sentence.
This story, along with Greenwald's focus on the vicious attacks on the ex-hostage Fox journalists, shows just how debased the rhetoric and morality of the right has sunk.