1) First of all, why the delay?
Was it because such brutal violence didn't "fit" with the theme the mainstream media is spinning; namely, that the Egyptian crowds were just a peaceful, innocent and joyful party of freedom-loving citizens? It makes you wonder what else about the demonstrators' motives and behavior is being kept out of the news?
Here is this terse statement CBS finally released yesterday:
On Friday, Feb. 11, the day Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan was covering the jubilation in Tahrir Square for a "60 Minutes" story when she and her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy.
In the crush of the mob, she was separated from her crew. She was surrounded and suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers. She reconnected with the CBS team, returned to her hotel and returned to the United States on the first flight the next morning. She is currently home recovering.
There will be no further comment from CBS News and correspondent Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time.
An obvious question, of course, is "whipped into a frenzy by what?" The report doesn't mention the answer. Nor does it reveal that Ms. Logan's injuries were extensive and she had to spend time in the hospital. And even this brief statement came only after CBS realized other news sources had discovered the story and were ready to report it.
2) Is the media protecting the Egyptian army? Earlier this month, Logan and her crew were grabbed by the Egyptian army at gunpoint and interrogated overnight under brutal and very frightening conditions. For instance, she was kept blindfolded and in an upright position all night. As a result, Logan vomited so much that she required intravenous fluids before the army released her and her crew. But that terrible night is being underplayed by the MSM today. In fact, hardly any of the stories even mention Logan's earlier experience. Could it be that reporters and news editors would rather not show the Egyptian army in such a negative light? After all, most of the Western news stories have portrayed the army as the good guys stepping in to save the country from Mubarak's villainy.
3) Ignoring the obvious. The tragic fact is that women are routinely subject to mistreatment in Egypt. From discrimination to unwanted attentions to beatings and sexual assault, women are routine victims. And what happens on the street starts first in the home -- domestic violence was estimated in 2005 to occur in a third of all Egyptian homes. But, given modern media's reluctance to report any negative elements whatsoever about Islam, it's not too surprising that the religion's overarching subjugation of women has not even been mentioned in most coverage of Ms. Logan's ordeal.
4) Another uncomfortable and politically-incorrect detail going unmentioned by the media is an anti-Semitic element in the story. Fox News reports that the men crowding around Logan just before she was grabbed were yelling, "Jew! Jew!"
5) Let me cite two exceptions to the omissions I mention above. One was the New York Post. The other was Washington Post's Richard Cohen. In his brief column, Cohen criticizes CBS' delay in reporting the story, the problem of how the assault interfered with the media's theme, and the troubling reports of "Jew!" being yelled before the attack. Here's a particularly appropriate observation of Cohen's: "As I'm sure even Logan would admit, the sexual assault of woman by a mob in the middle of a public square is a story. It is particularly a story because the crowd in Tahir Square was almost invariably characterized as friendly and out for nothing but democracy. In fact, some of the television correspondents acted as if they were reporting from Times Square on New Year's Eve, stopping only at putting on a party hat. In those circumstances, a mass sexual assault in what amount to the nighttime version of broad daylight is certainly worth reporting."
