The Life of a War Correspondent


November 8, 2011

Lara Logan and Kalb on stage at the Kalb Report speaking to each other seated

One weekend years ago, in a grocery store in Durban, South Africa, a young Lara Logan was waiting in line to buy 20 cents worth of candy with her father. She saw an old black man trying to buy a loaf of bread, but no one would serve him.

It was during apartheid, when this man, like many others in South Africa, was treated as a second-class citizen.

“When we got to the front, my father wouldn’t let us pay for the candy until the shopkeeper served this gentleman,” said Ms. Logan. “It was that kind of thing around me that taught me there was something very wrong.”

The “great sense of injustice” that filled Ms. Logan at a young age helped fuel her desire to chase stories in some of the most war-torn regions around the world for the last 20 years.

The award-winning CBS News chief foreign correspondent sat down with moderator and GW Presidential Fellow Marvin Kalb to share some of these stories at the Kalb Report Nov. 7 in the National Press Club.

A correspondent for CBS News and “60 Minutes” since 2006, Ms. Logan has reported on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in Egypt, Pakistan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Kosovo, Kenya, Tanzania, Angola, Mozambique and Burundi.

Ms. Logan first spoke about her beginnings as a journalist, investigating stories in South Africa’s townships.

“I went into the foreign media after that because I knew there was a whole world the South African government wouldn’t allow us to see,” she said.

Ms. Logan said the reporters she met in South Africa during the beginning of her career were the ones that taught her how to be a journalist.

“In South Africa, in the fight against apartheid, it wasn’t like the media is in a lot of other places,” she said. “People cared about the story. People were there because they believed that apartheid was wrong and if we could expose what was happening, that it would change.”

“There was something truly noble in what all of us did,” she added, “and great correspondents, great journalists, great cameramen from all over the world would come there and work, and that’s who taught me my craft.”

When asked to define the responsibilities of a war correspondent, Ms. Logan said she and her peers all believe that the story is “bigger than them.”

“If you’re motivated by being on television or seeing your byline in the newspaper then you aren’t there,” she said. “I think we’re motivated by the same thing [Edward R.] Murrow was motivated by--a passion and belief of being an observer and witness to history.”

She also noted that these war stories, like the atrocities against civilians during the Angolan civil war, need to be told or they “never happened.”

“Most people never cared about what happens in Angola, but I cared,” she said. “I didn’t do it because that was the thing that was going to make me famous. I did it because I believed in it.”

Although her job is dangerous— Ms. Logan spends months at a time on the frontlines— she said she would not want to do anything else.

“I would give up a toilet, a hot meal and a bed any day for a story that’s real. I can’t stand to dabble in things that are not real,” she said. “They don’t mean anything. Politics is critically important but it doesn’t burn that fire in me that way it does to be out there in the most impossible situation, doing something that’s truly the difference between life and death.”

Ms. Logan then spoke about the trust that can build over time while living with soldiers and military personnel, stating she has never encountered a story that was more important than her integrity.

“If I give my word that I’m not going to report something, or I give my word that this is the reason that I’m here, I need a very compelling reason to shift that,” she said. “I think your word is your bond. And the story has never been more important to me than who I am. I have to be able to live with myself before anything else.”

When asked what she thought of American war coverage, Ms. Logan said she preferred to listen to the people who had spent significant time on the ground.

“I think if you haven’t had time to taste the dirt in Afghanistan with Afghan people, if you haven’t had time to bleed in that dirt—and by bleed I don’t mean literally— I don’t think that you can ever have a true understanding,” she said.

“If I didn’t have a husband and two small children, I’d be in Afghanistan right now,” she added. “You’d need an armored division to dislodge me from that position.”

Ms. Logan and Mr. Kalb then talked about the brutal beating and sexual assault Ms. Logan suffered in Cairo in 2011. In past interviews, Ms. Logan had said she felt “half dead” before she was rescued from the mob, and she told Mr. Kalb the crime made her more cognizant of how dangerous her job can be.

“I think the thing that is most difficult is that it reminds you of the price that the people you love have to pay for what you do,” she said. “I could do this for me. If it was just me, I would’ve gone back to Libya, I would be testing myself and finding my limits but it’s not just me….I look at my children now and at my husband and think, “How could I do that to them?”

“I believe in the work as much as I ever have, but I’m conscious about how selfish that decision is and I’m conscious of the price that the people I love pay,” she added, “and that makes you afraid, and I don’t know if being afraid enables you to do the things that I’ve done.”

Telling the audience that she has “slugged her guts out” in every job, she urged prospective journalists in the audience to stay true to who they are.

“I never did it for anyone but myself,” she said. “I know what I believe in, and I’m prepared to stand up for that.”

Michael Freedman, professor of journalism and executive producer of the Kalb Report, said Ms. Logan was “arguably the single most candid and captivating guest ever to appear on this series.”

“Whether discussing the horrors of war, public policy, her personal life, or great journalism, she held back nothing,” he said. “On this program she proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she has the courage of her convictions.”

The Kalb Report series is produced by the GW Global Media Institute, the National Press Club and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. It is underwritten by a grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.