Acerbic Politics

CBS Reporter Apologizes To Viewers For False Reporting On Benghazi (Click on this headline to read the entire article)

BY HAYES BROWN ON NOVEMBER 8, 2013 AT 9:16 AM

CREDIT: AP

After a week of defending their reporting, CBS News’ Lara Logan on Friday morning made a stunning apology to her viewers for a much-hyped story about the Benghazi attack, based on an interview with a security contractor that directly contradicts what he told the FBI.

“We were wrong to put him on air and we apologize to our viewers,” Logan said on the CBS’ This Morning on Friday. “We will apologize to our viewers and we will correct the record on our broadcast on Sunday night,” she added.

On Sunday, CBS’ venerable 60 Minutes newsprogram aired what they hailed as a shocking new report on what really occurred the night of an attack on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya last year. Promoted as the culmination of a year-long investigation, the segment heavily featured an interview with Morgan Jones — a pseudonym for Dylan Davies, a security officer hired to help protect the U.S. assets in Benghazi — who claimed to have rushed to the scene the night of the attack, making him the first eyewitness of the attack to come forward for interviews.

Jones’ story was quickly questioned from various outlets, especially the progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, which published multiple stories over the course of the week about the holes in Davies’ story. Davies in response took to other media outlets, including The Daily Beast to defend himself against what he called smears.