Sometimes it's not censorship

By now, we’ve all heard and/or read the horrifying story of what happened to Lara Logan. This morning, however, I stumbled across an article criticizing CBS News for sitting on the story for five days.

“[60 Minutes] correspondent Lara Logan was repeatedly sexually assaulted by thugs yelling, ‘Jew! Jew!’ as she covered the chaotic fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo’s main square Friday.”

Powerful reporting on an important story. Two problems: It didn’t run until yesterday, and CBS didn’t run it. The quote is from the New York Post. And it was The Wall Street Journal that reported “the separation and assault lasted roughly 20 to 30 minutes.”

But CBS? They sat on their own story. For five days, as reporters reveled amid giddy celebrations in Tahrir Square, and as President Obama praised President Obama’s handling of the Egyptian crisis, CBS reported nothing.

The author of the article states that the reason why CBS sat on the story was because the media were busy hyping up the story that peaceful protesters were jubilant after Mubarak had stepped down and to report the incident would mar the image the media were projecting to Americans.

I must admit, at first I was angry that the media waited so long to report the story. Then, I thought for a moment. If this were to happen in America, the media would respect the victim’s privacy and not release his/her name. Maybe CBS was just trying to be respectful of a colleague who just suffered a brutal attack. It would make sense to also wait until she and her crew were back on American soil and safe before reporting. Logan may have also asked if they could sit on it a while. Whatever the case may be, and it could be all three, we don’t really know at this point. If I were in the same situation, I would, most likely, make the same call.

The fact is, we don’t have the whole story. If and until Logan decides to tell it, we won’t know the entire story. We can guess what was going on. We can say these were the “good guys” or the “bad guys” mixed in. We can speculate on the acceptance of rape in Egypt. We simply don’t know what actually happened.

For those comparing it to Anderson Cooper’s attack being plastered all over the news. This is completely different. Cooper was punched and beaten, but it was in no way even close to what happened to Logan. Sexual assault is far more personal and devastating than being punched in the face, beaten and kicked.

In my humble opinion, I believe CBS News has approached the situation with class and dignity. They have been decent enough in respecting Logan’s privacy. Other media outlets, as well as the public, should wait until Logan recovers. Then, and only then, when Logan feels comfortable addressing what happened, we can hear her story. Whether or not Logan was raped shouldn’t be the issue. This was a highly traumatic event and we should be patient enough to allow Logan to recover instead of continuing the speculative nonsense.