What to do going forward: CBS reporter sexually assaulted in Egypt

It's bullshit when a defense attorney brings up a victim wearing a miniskirt to a bar, and it's bullshit when discussing what Logan might have been wearing that day.

 

Two things...

Should you be more aware of the cultures of the country you are reporting from? I'm not condoning what was done, but sometimes we only see things as Americans from the inside looking out and forget there is another perspective.


Second, the Middle East is in a potentially historical point in their history. The actions of a few should not boldly paint the nation.

And this would not be the first time I am torn apart on here.

 

Thank you.

 

Last post was meant for Inky.

 

And for the record, she was wearing a North Face jacket over a black shirt when she was attacked. The "what was she wearing" stuff is particularly stupid in this case.

 

She says it better than I can...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/compost/2011/02/what_happened_to_lara_logan_wa.html

 

i finally mustered (barely) enough courage to read this thread. first and foremost, all of our heartfelt thoughts and prayers go out to lara logan, fwiw.

i come here with no answers for how to protect our foreign correspondents, regardless of gender, out of harm's way. the best suggestion i keep coming back to is that while i understand and greatly admire reporters who go balls out to 'be in the spit,' there comes a time and place where NONE OF THEM should 'be in the spit.'

and by that i mean IN THE SPIT -- i get the need to be on the periphery of the action. and as a wimpy sports journo i'm thankful for press boxes. but i'm not in the action there and have zero idea what the advantages are to 'be in the spit' as opposed to reportinr from the periphery.

i'll leave the answer up to those brave foreign corresponsents, producers and crews. god bless and protect them all.

most i ever felt uncomfortable as a sportsjourno was at the '88 season super bowl in miami (bengals-niners). the local 'liberty city' riots were the nows story of the week leading up to the game, so several of us covering the game figured it was a good time to imitate war correspondents by walking the streets to talk to residents.

ultimately some of us ended up at the bengals when solomon wilcots and a few teammates returned from their evening out.

"we went to see 'mississippi burning,'" wilcots said, 'and we came back here to see miami burning."

when i covered h.s. sports in new york city, 'dangerous' assignments meant covering a hoops game at boys high or some other school in a 'rough' neighborhood. but a young sportswriter (i was a naive 23) felt somewhat protected because folks knew i was there to write about pearl washington or jerry reynolds or beetle washington.

once, i pulled my new '80 toyota cellica (it was sweeet -- and cost 7,000 bucks!) in the staff lot adjacent to boys and girls high. when i got out of the car, some teens sauntered over, eyed my ride and began whispering. i just offered a quick, 'um, how ya doing?' locked the doors and began walking into the school. and i heard one kid say to the others, 'hey, be cool, man. that's shockey, he's here to write about pearl for the paper.' '

it was like a 'get out of jail free' card. no such protection for our foreign correspondents.

 

Well, for starters, she would not have been sexually assaulted.

 

I disagree. She says she is free to "walk unmolested in the street" and "I don't believe this could have happened here."

Both of these are incorrect. Women in all parts of the country are still subject to unwanted sexual advances/assaults and gang rape. Hell, it's almost a daily occurrence in our own military:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-02-15/robert-gates-sued-over-us-militarys-rape-epidemic/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsL2

 

You cannot compare the treatment of women in the United States to the treatment of women in Egypt. It's absurd, and it takes away from the debate at hand, in my opinion.

 

Common sense trumps political correctness.

We all know there are reporters from all forms of media who dream about the day they get to go into a war zone, a police action, a huge riot, whatever, with some sort of romanticized view that they will get the big story and be seen as a media hero. But all that carries big real-world risks, and that can be a painful, in some cases deadly, lesson.

 

From a blog post I read today:

"Concerns for women’s safety (some valid, some overblown) have long been used as an excuse to exclude us from all sorts of jobs and opportunities. It’s why we’re technically banned from military combat positions. It’s why we still aren’t allowed to ski-jump in the Olympics. It’s one reason why there are so few women reporting from war zones and areas where there is political unrest. This creates a hard rhetorical line to walk: Some jobs are indeed more dangerous for women than for men. But women still have every right to hold those jobs, too. In fact, when it comes to many dangerous professions, it’s only by women’s inclusion that conditions can begin to change."

http://bit.ly/eTLRcA