Nir Rosen, explaining to the guy he claimed Lara Logan was trying to outdo exactly what he meant.
It’s crazy how fast things move sometimes. Within a day, Nir Rosen went from some relatively low-profile journalist tweeting controversially about Lara Logan to Twitter trending topic who’s on Anderson Cooper. That’s right, he’s become the story as much as Logan has. (Which, considering the nature of the Logan story, is sad.) Nir Rosen has surpassed Kenneth Cole as the worst social media user of the Egypt crisis. But some have suggested that this is a situation where actually-harmless gallows humor met its worst enemy: The internet mob mentality. We disagree, but we’d like to offer our feelings first:
Our West Coast editor Kate Aurthur asks a good question. We’d like to know, too.
The two aren’t exactly connected, you know? This is like asking, “Has there been a smart piece about one of Mike Vick’s dogs that takes into account the dog’s persona as a treat-hungry bitch?”
I think it would be very difficult to do the kind of story you describe without essentially saying “she had it coming.”
Mark Coatney with absolutely the best take I’ve seen on the media fail that has been the Lara Logan attack. The gravity of the attack on Lara Logan is the same gravity of any sexual assault or violence; it exists in isolation from her previous career and from what your opinions may be of that. There is no way to analyse this attack in connection with judgments on who she was in other areas of her life without creating the argument that this was, in the end, karmic or cosmic comeuppance for a woman whom you found disagreeable or out of place. There’s no way to highlight her “celebrity” status without saying that somehow she’s getting something out this. Which she isn’t. She was assaulted. It was horrible. We should all recognise that this was a terrible incident that she now has to deal with physically and psychologically and that our opinions of her are not relevant here. We should all be sending her our best wishes instead of thinly veiled rape apologisms masquerading as news analyses.
Mark Coatney with the perfect rebuttal. And thepoliticalnotebook with the assist.
good news on the lara logan front. It’s being reported that Logan has been dismissed from the hospital following her “brutal and sustained sexual assault” in Cairo. While an unnamed source claims that, fortunately, Logan’s assault was “not a rape,” we can hardly imagine of the terror of it, especially in the context of a wild, tumultuous scene in Tahrir Square. Logan is reportedly in surprisingly good spirits, and is home with her family. Best wishes for her, and for her recovery. Relatedly, though, film critic Roger Ebert had this to say: “The attack on Lara Logan brings Middle East attitudes toward women into sad focus.” We’re all for somberly analyzing the broad implications of specific events, but really? Unless you can’t imagine a woman in America being sexually assaulted in a chaotic mob, it seems a little cheap and easy to paint a whole part of the world with the brush of this horrible event. Still, better than Nir Rosen’s analysis was. source
Mr. Rosen tells me that he misunderstood the severity of the attack on her in Cairo. He has apologized, withdrawn his remarks, and submitted his resignation as a fellow, which I have accepted. However, this in no way compensates for the harm his comments have inflicted.NYU Center on Law and Security Executive Director Karen J. Greenberg • In accepting Nir Rosen’s resignation over his comments on Twitter criticizing Lara Logan in the wake of reports of her sexual assault in Egypt. “I am deeply distressed by what he wrote about Ms. Logan and strongly denounce his comments,” Greenberg wrote in a statement. “They were cruel and insensitive and completely unacceptable.” Rosen, a journalist who has been featured in a number of publications in the past and is noted for his Iraq War coverage, profusely apologized for what he said on Twitter: “There is no point following me, i am done tweeting. Too ashamed of how i have hurt others and the false impression i gave of who i am.” source (via • follow)
Thirty-nine-year-old Logan has long attacked Hollywood-lite reporters for their dumbing down of overseas violence — at the same time using her Hollywood good looks and spotlight to push a more hard-hitting agenda.
I’m sorry, but is now the time that we should be attacking her character, focusing on her looks or pointing out her hypocrisy? When she’s in the hospital recovering from a vicious attack? Shame on you, LA Weekly. It’s also of note that this piece discusses a 2008 New York Post article about her sex life on assignment. Ugh. We need to wash our hands. (thanks kl7 for the tip)
Lara Logan was one of many attacked last week. But all of them are just as awful. The CBS reporter, well-known for her international coverage, was attacked on Friday, as the Mubarak regime fell, in a brutal sexual assault that had to be stopped by a large group of women and a number of soldiers. A few have used the opportunity to crudely attack Logan’s politics, which is the lowest of the low. We’re going to use this opportunity, instead, to point out the dangers that journalists faced in covering the Egypt story. Anderson Cooper got punched in the freaking head, yes, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg, really:
» And one journalist died during the crisis: According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a watchdog group, three journalists have died in Egypt since 1992. One of them, Ahmad Mohamed Mahmoud, a journalist for the state-owned newspaper Al-Ta’awun, died February 4 from gunshot wounds sustained while attempting to shoot video of security forces and demonstrators fighting. Security forces noticed him, and a sniper shot and killed him. ”They meant to kill him; they aimed at his head with live ammunition,” said his wife, Inas Abdel-Alim. “The perpetrator did this to him because he was filming what was happening. They didn’t want us to cover the massacre that happened that day.” And as awful as this all is, it pales in comparison to what journalists faced in nearby Iraq. Journalists do difficult work. Bloggers? We type into laptops. The biggest danger we face is spilling a macchiato on our hands while fervently typing. Don’t forget who does the real work.
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Nir Rosen learns the hard way that Twitter is a public forum and saying something stupid and insensitive gets you ripped apart.