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1. CBS News' Lara Logan is downplaying her own major journalistic failure -- one that led to her report being retracted by the network and her taking a lengthy leave of access -- and blaming it all on @mmfa. This is nonsense. Long thread coming…
@mmfa 3. This was a year after the Benghazi attack. Fox News and Republican members of Congress were still trying to use it as a cudgel to attack the Obama administration, but the rest of the press was skeptical, as they should have been. Then Logan’s report dropped.
4. I unfortunately don’t think I can share the full video of the report, for reasons which will become apparent. But it featured the supposed "eyewitness" account of the attacks from British security contractor Dylan Davies, who appeared under the pseudonym "Morgan Jones."
5. Davies, who had a book on his story published by a CBS-owned imprint out that week, told a dramatic story in which he scaled the wall of the burning diplomatic compound, hit a terrorist in the face with his rifle, and later saw Amb. Chris Stevens' body in a local hospital.
6. As I pointed out in a piece that night, Logan’s report also focused on the long-answered but in Logan’s telling “lingering question” about why no U.S. military forces came to support the U.S. personnel under fire in Benghazi. mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/2…
7. Fox and GOP legislators like Sen. Lindsey Graham loved the report and did everything they could over the next few days to give it oxygen. There was a warning sign though -- a Fox correspondent admitted on-air that he had stopped using Davies as a source when he asked for $$$$.
8. And then, on Oct. 31, The Washington Post blew a hole through the 60 Minutes story, reporting that Davies’ incident report to his security contractor bosses said he never got to the compound that night. His hospital story wasn’t in the report, either.
9. For several days, as other media outlets pointed to the flaws in the 60 Minutes report, Logan, Davies, his publisher, and CBS News stood by the story. Logan "attributed the critical response to the report to the intense political warfare that has surrounded the episode."
10. Then on Nov. 7, the NY Times reported that the account Davies had given to the FBI contradicted the story he told in his book and to CBS. Whoops!
11. Within hours, CBS News confirmed the Times’ reporting on Davies’ comments to the FBI. They pulled the 60 Minutes report from their website and YouTube channel.
13. Skipping over a bunch of additional reporting and criticism of CBS News, what you need to know is that CBS News conducted a “journalistic review”on the story and announced that in light of the review, Logan had agreed to the network’s request that she take a leave of absence.
14. Did @mmfa play a big role in ensuring that CBS News had to take responsibility for a huge journalistic failure? You bet we did. Here’s a good piece from @daveweigel detailing our work. slate.com/news-and-polit… 
15. On a personal level, I was leading our investigative team at the time. It’s probably some of the work I’m proudest of over the 12 years I’ve spent here. Shout-out to @bendimiero
@ehananoki @grouchybagels @owillis @JoeStrupp and the rest for their incredible work.
@ehananoki @grouchybagels @owillis @JoeStrupp and the rest for their incredible work.
16. But I’ll tell you a secret: As much as I might like it to be otherwise, major broadcast networks don’t retract stories, launch internal investigations, and force correspondents to take leaves of absence just because I don’t like their reports. I know, I’m shocked too.
17. The reason CBS News was forced to answer for what they did was that we were right, and everyone else in the media knew it.
18. We did a damn good job keeping attention on the story so that CBS couldn’t wait for it to blow over. But Wash. Post and NY Times broke the stories that killed the report.
19. And the network was absolutely pilloried by the rest of the press, to the point where you were seeing headlines like this:
20. None of this was personal, as much as Logan clearly would like to say otherwise. I have no strong feelings about her broader body of work. But on this particular 60 Minutes report, she didn't do her job, so we did ours. #fin
A coda to this: Here's the Fox & Friends gang this morning, absolutely elated about her comments attacking the press as excessively liberal.
