"On the scene we have..."

I have to tread lightly in talking about the attack on Lara Logan, because the last thing I want to do is accuse the victim of a terrible crime of “bringing it upon herself,” especially when she was attacked in the process of doing her job as she believed that job to be. I wish her well, and hope that she enjoys a full and speedy recovery.

That being said, I have never liked Lara Logan, and have never respected her reporting. What she has done is not courage, it is recklessness in pursuit of self aggrandizement. In her reporting she always has injected herself into the story in a major way, describing her own actions and feelings rather than the actions of the troops upon whom she was reporting. The vast majority of the time it was her face in front of the camera rather than the supposed subject of her news. Ernie Pyle didn’t go to the battle front and take pictures of himself.

It is the function of the news anchor to be seen on camera. Field reporters should be displaying that upon which they report. They should be heard seldom and seen not at all. Today they all too often play the role of “news anchor on the scene” and Lara Logan is among the worst practitioners of the genre.