Lara Logan Recovers From Assault Amid Confusion, Calls For Justice

CBS reporter and sexual assault survivor Lara Logan is now recovering at home, and she could be back at work in a few weeks. Meanwhile, President Obama is demanding justice for her attackers — and CNN has made a strange decision in its coverage.

Accounts of Logan’s recovery vary — yesterday, the NY Post reported that Logan had “vowed to return to work ‘within weeks.'” But another Post article dated today included the following:

Friends said she wants to return to work, but won’t be coming back anytime soon after suffering what the network called “serious” internal injuries in the ugly Feb. 11 incident, which CBS revealed Tuesday.

“She has no idea how long this is going to take,” a source said.

What we do know is that she’s at home with her family — and that she received a call from President Obama yesterday. The White House has also apparently “demanded” that Egypt bring Logan’s attackers to justice — a demand that may be tough to satisfy given the chaos within which the assault took place. Muddying the waters further is a strange decision by CNN: as the LA Times Show Tracker blog points out, during an Anderson Cooper 360 segment on Logan, the network chose to alter a photo of Logan taken just before the assault — they blurred the faces of several men standing behind her (see above). CBS and the AP have distributed the photo without blurring, so it’s not clear why CNN felt the men’s identities needed to be hidden. Writes Scott Collins,

It is possible that CNN worried about legal liability – despite the fact that the image was taken in a public place during a thronged demonstration of pressing international interest and had been distributed through a wire service. By partly obscuring the image, CNN tampered with the journalistic record without explanation, leaving it to viewers to guess whether the network intended to protect or incriminate the figures in the background.

There’s no evidence as yet to suggest that the blurred-out men are being investigated in connection with the assault, and neither they nor any actual suspects have yet been publicly identified. Logan’s attackers so far remain anonymous — she, on the other hand, is a public figure, and thus subject to the scrutiny of everybody who has an opinion on how her looks or her political views should play into our understanding of her attack (hint: they shouldn’t). Once CBS announced her assault publicly, complete privacy was no longer an option for Logan. But respect still is — and after the debacle that was Nir Rosen’s reaction to Logan’s assault, maybe the media will learn how to have some.

Obama Demands Egypt Round Up Thugs Who Brutalized CBS Reporter [NY Post]
CBS News Reporter Lara Logan Vows To Return To Work In A Few Weeks: Report [NY Post]
President Obama Calls CBS News Correspondent Lara Logan After Reports Of Egypt Sex Assault [NY Daily News]
Lara Logan Photo Altered On CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360’ [LA Times Show Tracker Blog]

Earlier: After Lara Logan’s Sexual Assault, Media Helpfully Discuss Her Hotness
CBS Reporter Lara Logan Sexually Assaulted In Egypt