“60 Minutes” reporter Lara Logan and producer Max McClellan will “take a leave of absence,” CBS News chairman Jeff Fager tells staffers in a memo obtained by The Huffington Post. “60 Minutes” failed to “take full advantage of the reporting abilities of CBS News that might have prevented” its botched Benghazi report from happening, Fager writes.
CBS News later confirmed the HuffPost report in its own story posted Tuesday.
HuffPost also has a summary of Al Ortiz’ review of the segment, which Ortiz says “was deficient in several respects.” “60 Minutes” source Dylan Davies’ admission to CBS “that he had not told his employer the truth about his own actions – should have been a red flag in the editorial vetting process,” Ortiz writes. Further, Logan “made a speech in which she took a strong public position arguing that the US Government was misrepresenting the threat from Al Qaeda, and urging actions that the US should take in response to the Benghazi attack” last October, Ortiz notes. That’s “a conflict,” Ortiz says.
Previously: 60 Minutes apologizes for botched Benghazi report: A timeline | How the ’60 Minutes’ Benghazi debacle is similar, different than Rathergate | ’60 Minutes’ apology shows CBS News is ‘not used to the openness of the new environment’ | Al Tompkins: “CBS explained nothing”
