Influential right-wing bloggers Timmy Blair and Andrew Bolt pick up the scent of a new scandal with a link to an old target. Says Bolt:
Was Lara Logan, a former swimsuit model, just training for her new job?
…
Tim Blair notes the involvement of our dubious friend, Michael Ware, the terrorists’ favorite conduit.
The story relates to reports of a “love triangle” in Iraq, which originated in another of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids, the New York Post. During the same week that the story about her personal life has been widely reported, it was also announced that she would be returning from the Middle East to become the Washington-based “chief foreign affairs correspondent.” Bolt and Blair don’t bother saying anything sensible – just a few quick sniggers about how an unqualified swimsuit model has managed to get herself a Washington post after being caught up in a “sex scandal” with a “terrorist conduit”.
Here are the parts of the story they neglect to mention:
- Logan’s CV includes considerably more than swimsuit modelling – in fact, she has quickly built a reputation as a respected Middle East correspondent.
- Logan has been a vocal critic of the claims that the American media is slanted toward portraying Iraq is being in a worse state than it really is. In fact, Logan has argued the opposite, most recently on The Daily Show last week.
- The story of the “scandal” reported in the Post has been sexed up, as indicated by the contradictions that they completely ignore.
- The “scandal” itself is not new – it was first reported last December, on the conservative Free Republic web site, and was dug up by the Post this week.
- Logan has been the subject of previous smear attempts by conservatives – Michelle Malkin suggested that Logan had used video footage supplied by al Qaeda.
So, a highly respected Iraq correspondent appears on US television arguing that the situation in that country is considerably worse than what Americans see in their media. Within days, details of her personal life, some of which are subject to conflicting reports by other sources, are picked up out of the conservative Internets community and published in the Murdoch press at the same time that the correspondent is “promoted” by CBS to a senior post in Washington. Australian Murdoch pundits then use these claims, capitalising on a link to someone they have previously labelled as a terrorist liaison, in an attempt to undermine the journalist’s credibility – and, along with it, the credibility of her arguments about Iraq and war reporting. Digby sees the same pattern in the way this is being used across the Pacific.
