Lara Logan cheers Ted Koppel's comments on media bias: Finally, I'm not alone

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Lara Logan cheers Ted Koppel's comments on media bias: Finally, I'm not alone

Journalists are walking 'hand in hand' with propaganda groups to push narratives, says veteran journalist Lara Logan on 'Life, Liberty & Levin.'

This is a rush transcript from "Life, Liberty & Levin," April 7, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MARK LEVIN, HOST, LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN: Hello, America. I'm Mark Levin.  This is "Life, Liberty & Levin. Lara Logan, how are you?

LARA LOGAN, FORMER CBS NEWS CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Mark.

LEVIN: Thanks for coming. It's an honor to meet you.

LOGAN: Thank you for having me.

LEVIN: Great pleasure. I've admired you from afar, you're reporting all over the world. Very, very dangerous places. Your last slot was with CBS "60 Minutes," but you've been with a lot of media -- important media companies. You've reported out of Afghanistan. You've reported the Middle East including Egypt. You've reported about Benghazi. You've reported about a lot of the big issues of our time.

Recently, at least for a lot of us, you did an interview with a gentleman by the name of Mike Ritland, a former Navy SEAL. You did a podcast and you gave your opinion of the media.

I want to read you something that Ted Koppel recently said, and see if you agree with it or want to add to it or subtract from it. He said the other day, "I'm terribly concerned that when you talk about the "New York Times" these days, when you talk about "The Washington Post" we're not talking about the "New York Times" of 50 years ago, we're not talking about "The Washington Post" of 50 years ago, we're talking about organizations that I believe have in fact decided as organizations that Donald Trump is bad for the United States, that we have things appearing on the front page of the "New York Times" right now that never would have appeared 50 years ago; analysis and commentary on the front page."

He also said, "This perception that the establishment press is out to get him (meaning the President) doesn't mean the great journalism does nothing, but the notion that most of us look upon Donald Trump as being an absolute fiasco and he's not mistaken in that perception and he's not mistaken when so many of the liberal media for example describe themselves as belonging to the resistance. What does that mean?" What does that mean? Have you experienced this, too?

LOGAN: I have, and I have to say that I was cheering when I heard it reported on what Ted Koppel had said because I thought, "Wow, finally someone else is standing up," and I'm not alone anymore. Because when it's just me, I'm easy to crush, right? But when it's myself and it's Ted Koppel and there was a former managing editor at the "New York Times" who came out and said the same thing, they've become the paper of record against Donald Trump.

And so what you're seeing is a growing number of figures and this restores my faith in journalism because I know these people are there. I know I'm not a lone ranger. I know I'm not the only one who remembers what great independent journalism is supposed to look like.

I know I'm not the only journalist who's watching in horror as opinion and pejorative language is passed off as fact, where anonymous sources are given complete cover to do political assassinations without any regard for the consequences of what they're doing, where journalists are walking hand- in-hand with propaganda groups and pushing forward narratives that are not based in fact, that are not based in honest journalism, that are nothing more, you know, than political targeting thinly disguised as journalism today.

And you know the best part about all of this, Mark? There's one set of people who are not fooled by any of it. They lack the context very often.  They lack a lot of the information to know exactly the extent of how they're being deceived and manipulated, but they know in their guts and that's the audience. That's the viewers. That's the readers. That's all the people in the length and breadth of this country in whether they're Democrats or Republicans, who are lining up to have this conversation right now, who know that something is not right and that's why they're turning away from the news and that's why they're not watching.

And that's why they're frustrated and that's why there's so little trust and faith in the media these days and responsibility and accountability begins with us.

LEVIN: Why do you think this is the case? Why do you think one ideology, really one party is so ubiquitous in newsrooms, whether it's newspapers, whether it's cable TV, whether it's network TV, whatever it is -- this is taught in journalism school or it's become more ways sort of a social circle or they hire one another? How do you explain this?

LOGAN: Well in my experience, there are several parts to this. It's no secret that the vast majority of academic institutions in this country are liberal, right? And for me, I want to be very clear here. I'm an independent thinker, okay, nobody owns me. I'm not owned by the left and I'm not owned by the right. Nobody owns me. I want to be very clear about that, because I've been falsely labeled as being politically motivated in any direction, and none of that is true.

So what bothers me is that one political ideology dominates all of your academic -- almost all of your academic institutions and that same political ideology dominates all of your newsrooms, almost all of your newsrooms

I mean, let's face it, until Fox News, in television where did you go if you weren't liberally minded or moderate, if you like? If you wanted to hear an alternative point of view or a conservative point of view, where did you go in television? You didn't go -- there was nowhere to go.

So Fox News to me is so successful because there are so many Americans saying, "Hey, I want a different point of view. I want to hear something else." And most people will look at a little, you know, sample of all different kinds of media especially today.

LEVIN: Isn't it that Fox News is under attack by CNN and MSNBC and the "New York Times" does this big story, and "The New Yorker" magazine ...

LOGAN: Of course.

LEVIN:  ... does a big story and then all of a sudden, their hosts are under attack and they're being boycotted and their advertisers are being boycotted, because they cannot tolerate even one platform that doesn't do the dance?

LOGAN: Yes, because when they are all singing from the same hymn sheet, all their butts are covered, aren't they? Nobody is challenging them.  Nobody is holding them to account for what they're reporting. We all go sailing along thinking we're doing such amazing outstanding work.

There was an incredible reporter who said this once, Gary Webb, if anyone has seen the movie "To Kill the Messenger." He was the guy who broke the story about the CIA's involvement in crack cocaine on the streets of America and their involvement in funding rebels, right, and using drug money to do so.

Well, Gary Webb won the Pulitzer and then he was destroyed. This man killed himself by, by the way shooting himself twice in the head, which is quite an achievement and he said, "I was going, you know, to journalism colleges and I was giving speeches and I was getting awards and you know, I was being lauded and recognized by my whole profession and then I realized what it was really about. It wasn't because I was so great and because my work was so good, it's because I've never done -- I'd never written anything important enough to suppress."

And that ended with Gary Webb having no career, no family. He lost everything and then he lost his life.

So when you stay inside the bubble and inside the narrative that dominates the media industry, it's a safe place to be because nobody's coming after you. These propaganda groups and one in particular, Media Matters for America, they're targeting Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham morning to night. They have an army of people who are paid to do this. That's their job. Every day when they wake up, they're looking for a way to destroy these people.

LEVIN: But they feed the other media outlets and they're more than happy to use the opposition research, believe it or not, on these hosts.

LOGAN: Well, think about it. If you have a profession that is dominated by one political ideology, when you have propagandists who are feeding that ideology, they agree with each other, so they have fertile ground for those ideas to take root.

Not all journalists -- just because you're a liberal doesn't mean that you can't be a great journalist. Just because you vote Democrat doesn't mean you can't be a great journalist. Fortunately, for all of us, there are principles of great journalism that exist outside of the politics.

But what all of us have is we're human and so we have things. We're all predisposed to believe people we agree with and like, more so than we do with the people that we think you know are -- we don't agree with. And so you have fertile ground for this propaganda to take root, and then on top of that, you have a lot of laziness, you have a lot of armchair reporters who are just happy to pick up a phone to report whatever a source tells them because it's the White House or it's the FBI or it's someone where their butts are covered, right, no one is ever going to hold them to account if they report nonsense because they've got an official source for it.

But now what's happened, what's changed -- because that was always there, right, what's changed today is that you now have a press corps that is working hand-in-hand with propaganda organizations with a political agenda, and so what Ted Koppel was saying, people are part of the resistance.  That's exactly what I was talking about when I said too many journalists today are political operatives now. They've forgotten how to be journalists. They've forgotten what we're supposed to be as journalists and they've become political operatives.

They have a predetermined outcome for all of their reporting. They want the removal of this President. They don't think he should ever have been elected. They don't like anything about him. You know what it's called?  Resisting the normalization of Donald Trump, it's a Media Matters mission statement.

It's Media Matters for America who put this out to their donors and their funders and their supporters that they will resist the normalization of Donald Trump and that means you're not allowed to look at any policy of this administration and evaluate that policy on its merits, you're not allowed to balance your reporting. You're not -- you know people say to me, "Well, this President doesn't help himself with his style," and I say, "I'm sure that's true." I mean, you know he rubs everybody up the wrong way at some point or another. Style is not his strength.

But my question is, how much would his style matter if we spent 50 percent of the time talking about his style instead of 98 percent of the time? And what if we had 50 percent of the time actually looking at the policies of the administration and seeing what works and what doesn't? Would we care so much about his style then?

Part of the mission statement for this propaganda movement is that Donald Trump will be known forever as the least popular President in America. So that is going to be what -- that's a predetermined outcome that they want, and what disappoints me and actually what really, I find extraordinarily concerning to use Ted Koppel's words, I'm very concerned by is the number of journalists who've taken a political position and you still expect and demand the legitimacy of being objective and independent and being open and balanced and fair.

These are not people who are open-minded. Your minds have become closed and until we recognize that, we're going to continue sowing the seeds of our own death and destruction and by the way, these propaganda groups don't want an independent robust press. They're only too happy to see us bury ourselves because they're working on controlling the different levers.

They don't -- if independent voice was what they wanted, if great journalists were what they wanted, if that was their problem with me with my journalism, then they would be so -- they wouldn't be doing.

LEVIN: All right, ladies and gentlemen, don't forget during most weeknights, you can watch me on Levin TV, Levin TV. Go to blazetv.com/mark, blazetv.com/mark or give us a call at 844-LEVIN-TV, 844- LEVIN-TV. We'd love to have you. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: Lara Logan, I noticed there's a lot of personalities in journalism.  You know, in the past, people would say, 'Oh there's Huntley-Brinkley.  There's Cronkite," but these people weren't seeking drama. They weren't known because of drama. They were known because there were so few media outlets and people who watch the "Nightly News" and so forth, but with the 24/7 news, it looks like almost a drama class in high school where people are fighting to get at the front of the line and in particular, who comes to mind is Jim Acosta.

CNN, you have Presidents for press conferences and to me, freedom of the press is about the American people learning what's going on, asking tough questions holding powerful people accountable, but not giving speeches and being disruptive and undermining the entire process. Am I wrong?

LOGAN: Well, I've been a journalist for 30 years and I've been in many press conferences with many different Presidents in all different places.  I've been at the White House and I've been, you know, in Baghdad when you've had visiting Secretaries of Defense and all the rest. I've never seen the Press Corps behave the way they do today.

So it stands out to me because it's a departure from what I've seen for throughout the last three decades and I will say that curious about that, I went on the CNN website as I frequently do when I'm looking across the landscape at all different media organizations and I constantly see headlines about CNN anchor takes a Trump adviser, CNN anchor destroys Trump this or that.

And what I'm surprised by is how much of the news on their website is about their anchors and their reporters and their analysts attacking and destroying anything that the White House says and does and that to me is symbolic of the problem, but there is something actually much more significant about what you're seeing happen with the White House Press Corps.

Donald Trump has shown everybody just with his Twitter account that he's changing the way the President communicates in the United States of America today, which is completely consistent with what everybody is doing, right?  In the digital age, with all of this technology, we're all changing how we communicate.

Media organizations are doing it. Political leaders are doing it. The Ayatollah of Iran has a Twitter feed, okay? So why is Donald Trump not allowed to do that? Why is he not allowed to change how the White House operates in terms of its communications and the rules of the White House Press Corps and how these things happen?

He is not allowed to be seen as an instrument of change. That's a propaganda talking point of the progressive political movement. He is not allowed to be normalized as a President, so whatever changes he makes have to be resisted by the resistance and then on top of that, if you look at one of the things that Media Matters for America, a propaganda group gloats about in all their publicity is that they prevented Breitbart from getting a White House press credential, right?

They used their rules to stop the White House from allowing Breitbart to attend any press conferences and be part of the White House press corps.  Why?

So if you change the rules, then people like Media Matters -- these propaganda organizations of the left, they won't be able to use those rules to their advantage. They don't want you to change the rules. Number two, if you -- if they can't use the rules, then they can't stop people like Breitbart getting access and being part of the conversation in America, and that's what they don't want.

They don't want alternative points of view. They most especially don't want conservative points of view. They don't want to empower websites like Breitbart or Drudge or anybody else and more importantly than that, they don't want anyone to have the ability to communicate their message directly. They want it to be filtered through this network of propaganda organizations that are dominated by one political ideology and deliver their message.

So you know, all this stuff about Jim Acosta is masking something much more sinister and really threatening to me as a journalist because what it effectively means is that we don't want a democracy. We don't want freedom of thought and freedom of discussion.

LEVIN: Is journalism dead?

LOGAN: No, it'll never die. Journalism is not dead.

LEVIN: Are there great journalists still out there?

LOGAN: Yes.

LEVIN: They're just outnumbered?

LOGAN: Yes. They're outnumbered and they're bullied and they're silenced and some of them, you know, maybe are not bullied and they are fighting their fight, they're just doing it in a more subtle way than I'm doing it.

You know, the way that I was trying to do it by the way, that I've been trying to do it for years and you know, you've got amazing journalists that Carlotta Gall at the "New York Times," one of the best reporters on the Afghan-Pakistan conflict. Rich Oppel at the "New York Times," I mean, I really don't like a lot of what the "New York Times" does. I'll be honest with you. They have some of the worst journalists ever, so I don't say this because I'm trying to elevate one institution over another.

It just happens to be that some of the greatest journalists I know, but there's also Max McClelland, my former producer at "60 Minutes." There's Jeff Newton, another great journalist I worked with. There's lots of them.

LOGAN: How about Jeff Zucker? He has been out there. He runs CNN. He just got a First Amendment Award for a real -- he's out there saying, we believe in telling the truth. Isn't CNN the example of the opposite? I mean, can you tell the difference between the journalists and the opinion givers over at CNN? Honestly, I cannot.

LOGAN: Well, that's a very interesting question because I was wondering myself this morning, is Don Lemon an opinion person? Like, I know Sean Hannity is, right? He makes no secret of it. So does Tucker Carlson, so does Laura Ingraham, but what about Don Lemon? Is he an opinion person?  Rachel Maddow, I know where she sits, right, so what about people like Don Lemon?

I don't -- I can't tell, but what I can tell is that there's not a lot of - - there's a lot of opinion in his show. That's 100 percent. In fact, it's almost all opinion from beginning to end.

LEVIN: Look, Brian Stelter who is the media guy.

LOGAN Really?

LEVIN: On the weekend, who appears to be the anti-Fox guy.

LOGAN: Well, I will tell you what I use Brian Stelter for, as a road map for the political propaganda strategy of the progressive movement because he lays it all out there in his newsletter that he does every day and in what he says.

You can look at Media Matters for America's propaganda talking points and you can be absolutely certain that Brian Stelter will follow the line to the letter on every one of those talking points and he'll be pushing them and the people who are all in that network -- Michael Calderon and all of these others, Jo Hagen who went from "New York Magazine" to somewhere else now, but still -- these are like -- you know, they fly the flag for this particular political ideology and they all work together and they elevate each other and they tweet each other's work and they push it forward and you see it.

Once you start to see these patterns and you know what's good, Mark, really, people are starting to recognize these patterns more and more.

LEVIN: I want to get into this when we come back. I just want to get into how you're being treated now that you have been much more public or noticed by the public in terms of your comments. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AISHAH HASNIE, CORRESPONDENT, FOX NEWS: This is a Fox News Alert from "America's News Headquarters," I'm Aishah Hasnie. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has resigned. It comes amid growing frustration by the administration over the number of southern border crossings. In her resignation to President Trump, she writes this, "It has been my great honor to lead the men and women of the Department as its sixth Secretary.  I could not be prouder of and more humbled by their service, dedication and commitment to keep our country safe from all threats and hazards."

According to White House sources though, President Trump apparently asked for Nielsen's resignation because he wants the quote, "toughest cop on border security." The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner will take over as acting head of that department.

I'm Aishah Hasnie, now back to "Life, Liberty & Levin."

LU STOUT: Lara Logan, what's been the reaction over the last six weeks or so since you did the podcast interview? Since you've done the "Hannity" show, other shows, what's been the reaction?

LOGAN: Well, first you know, I had to work out what everyone was calling and e-mailing about because it was such a shock. I had no idea that there would be such a reaction, that it would catch fire like that. I mean, it was trending on Twitter for two days apparently and that's a big deal.

So you know in my world, I've learned very, very well to tune out anything that's negative. I just don't pay attention to the detractors because I know they come from a really bad place and when I -- you know, I was raised to live my life to be true to who I am and to stand up for what is right and that's all I'm doing.

And actually, you know, what's really great? Is that all the journalists who have reached out to me directly or through other people, that's how bad it is, Mark, that journalists are afraid to send you a note -- some journalist -- on their work accounts because supporting what you're saying, because it's that threatening to their careers.

So you know what I say is, as a journalist today in America, we're not free. We can't for example do a story interviewing scientists about who dispute the science on climate change, right, because if you do that story, if you're really just interested in the science and you want to understand this better and you're trying to figure out what's true, what's not true and you're trying to understand it for yourself, that's now a political -- that's a no-no. That's the end of your career.

You talk to scientists and see they'll tell you the same thing. You can't get a research grant if you want to look at some of the -- if you're going to question any of that science, so that means that we're not free. We don't have the freedom to do whatever story we want to do and investigate what we want to investigate. We live in a society where people are telling us it's okay to have that conversation. That conversation is not allowed.  You cannot have that conversation.

And the way they've done it is to claim the moral high ground on everything. We have the morally superior position. We have the moral authority to talk about this, so if you deviate from our position at all, you have no moral authority, i.e., you're a terrible person.

And that to me is what -- there are lots of journalists who know in their hearts that that's not right and who want to stand up against that and who just want to do honest, independent, journalism and the great thing about this is that now with Ted Koppel coming out and saying what he said, that I'm hopeful that more journalists will stand up because, really, you know the best journalist at heart where anarchists, right?

We're just a bunch of nosy people and we resist all forms of control.  That's who I am. I resist all forms of control. Just ask my husband.

LEVIN: How has the public responded to you?

LOGAN: Great. In fact, it's really interesting because, Mark, long before I did that podcast, I've been talking about this and I honestly travel the length and breadth of this country during speaking events and I just spoke to two and half thousand people in Tulsa, Oklahoma and you know, they leapt to their feet when I was done.

And honestly, I got the same reaction in Campbell, California and in Portland, Oregon and in Pittsburgh and I believe that this is a non- partisan issue. This is not a left-right issue. It's misused by propaganda and it's dominated by one political ideology which makes it political, but it has another dimension to it that is just as significant and in fact even more powerful, and that is that it speaks to what's inside every single one of us who believe in freedom and that's what it's really about.

LEVIN: Do you think we have more or less freedom of the press? Now, what I mean by that is, of course, the press is free. Really, nobody is telling the press what to do. We don't have sedition acts that we enforce like we did in the past. You don't have journalists going to prison, although --

LOGAN: You have economic terrorism. "We're going take your advertisers away if you say things we don't want you to say."

LEVIN: True, true.

LOGAN: You have social media terrorism where, "We're going to destroy your whole career and your whole life and make you unemployable."

LEVIN: But not from the government and that's my point.

LOGAN: Yes.

LEVIN: Not from this administration, the prior administration went after a "New York Times" reporter, for seven years held prison over his head. The prior administration, the Obama administration went after a Fox reporter.  The prior administration, the Obama administration went after the Associated Press, 20 different reporters were surveilled at one point or another.

LOGAN: Yes.

LEVIN: Other administrations have, not the Trump administration.

LOGAN: Well the political propaganda organization that targeted me, look at the White House visitor logs under the Obama administration. David Brock from Media Matters was going to the White House twice a week, sometimes you can take their talking points and mirror that with what the White House was saying.

So this propaganda organization that was inside the White House is also inside the media and silencing people. You know, I don't want to -- I'm not political, so I would agree with you, yes, there's no question, just look at the numbers what the last administration did and the number of journalists that were prosecuted was extraordinary and not just prosecuted, but there were very -- there were illegal tactics that were used.

You know what they did to the Associated Press's telephones without following the law? That wasn't right. What they did to Sharyl Attkisson and the lawsuit, if you're following her lawsuit, I've been following Sharyl's lawsuit because that's very significant and that woman is made of steel. She's one of the bravest women that I've ever known and when I say that, people say, "Oh don't mention Sharyl, you'll be chastised," you know some kind of right-wing person.

I mention Sharyl because she's honest. She is an amazing journalist and she is unbelievably courageous. She just carved her own path and she's actually standing up for her rights and she's doing it in a court of law which is no small thing.

LEVIN: I agree with you. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: You know Lara Logan, the way we ended the last segment, I had mentioned that this President really has been hands-off the media. The fact that he told "Acosta, get out of here," CNN wasn't dismissed from the presidential press conference, they still have three or four reporters there. There's 200 reporters in that room at any given time during these press conferences.

But it was his conduct, that's why he was asked to leave, he was disrupting a presidential press conference and you're really not free to do that. It doesn't serve the interests of the American people or free speech or freedom of the press. But I really don't see this President doing things that past presidents did whether it's John Adams, whether it's Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Barack Obama and yet he is said to be the most anti-press President we've ever had. What do you make of that?

LOGAN: Well, it's easy to take comments that he's made and say that this is an attack on the press, right? Because he's more brutal in fact ironically, more brutally honest about it.

I've never encountered a White House that ever took questions from a journalist they didn't want to take questions from. I've never encountered a White House that didn't control how they communicated with the media.

In my experience as a journalist, whether it's the State Department or the White House or the Pentagon, they're always in control of how they communicate, so I've never seen this as a threat. I've never felt threatened by any of it as a journalist. I don't buy it -- I know what it is to be threatened as a journalist, okay? I know what it is when you're on a battlefield or you're in a very difficult situation with a hostage threat and you're just trying to survive.

I know what it is to be targeted, I mean, geez, in Egypt when they declared journalists the enemy of the state, you know, I was gang-raped and sodomized and almost murdered. So, I know what it is to be targeted and I would never -- I mean, I will stand by every single journalist who is put at risk, but I do not find Donald Trump railing against press as a threat to press freedom or a threat to my personal safety. I just -- I don't believe that those dots actually connect. That to me is propaganda.

And I say to any journalist, it takes moral courage to do this job properly, to do it the way it's supposed to be done. It takes moral courage to stand against the tide and not just go with the flow. Maybe the flow is what where you honestly believe the story to be and that's fine if that's your honest, independent assessment, that's one thing, but you know, I have to say that I agree with you. For me as a journalist, I don't find this threatening.

LEVIN: You reported from Afghanistan also.

LOGAN: I did. I've spent many years in Afghanistan.

LEVIN: Many years in Afghanistan. You've been in some very, very hard countries.

LOGAN: Five years living in Baghdad at the height of the violence.

LEVIN: And where women are not necessarily treated very well.

LOGAN: No.

LEVIN: Where they're not necessarily respected. What's that like?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOGAN: In the few days since the United front made their triumphant entry into the city, life has changed dramatically.

All the 37 suicide bombers --

The sound that you're hearing now is a 50-caliber machine gun being fired.

When I came into Kabul for the first time with the Afghan forces when they took the city from the Taliban in 2001, there wasn't a single light.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LOGAN: Well, you know, strangely enough, there's a double standard in many of those societies in terms of foreign women. As a foreign woman, I was able to do things that that no local woman would have been able to do. In Afghanistan for example, when I was first there, the Taliban controlled 95 percent of that country, so women stayed indoors. They were prisoners, domestic prisoners. Many women and Afghanistan are still domestic prisoners.

But I was going all over the country. I mean, half the time, these men -- these Afghan soldiers I lived with on the front line were like, "Where did she come from?" You know and very often, I didn't wear a headscarf either.  I mean, I was always respectful. I wore it to be respectful in certain places and in certain circumstances, but I wasn't going to wear it to be a liar.

I'm not going to go just wandering around Afghanistan pretending to everybody that I'm sort of you know, some kind of modest Muslim - Islamic woman, I'm not. I'm a free woman from a free country and a free press and I'm here to do my job and that's how I approached it.

And you know what I found, a lot of respect for that. I found that the people I dealt with respected that they knew who I was and they knew why I was there and they knew that I approached every story I ever did with an open mind and an open heart and I didn't bring a whole bunch of preconceptions and they respected that.

In fact, what I found is that it's in many ways, I've been much more disrespected here in this environment as a woman than I ever was over there.

LEVIN: Very interesting. By whom? By some organizations?

LOGAN: Well for example --

LEVIN: By the media organization?

LOGAN: For example, I've been called -- and by other media writers as -- I've been called reckless and they all say -- they go to the people that don't like you in your work. They go -- I mean, let's face it, right? For every person that loves how you've succeeded in what you've done, there's someone who doesn't.

So they go and find those people and they do a story about it that you know -- and they say -- I'm not ambitious, I'm reckless, right? How am I reckless? Who did I ever get killed? What did I ever do in my career that can be called reckless? I did things that were as much as humanly possible for a journalist to do. I did things that other journalists did. I did things as a team working hand-in-hand with other people and I tried to be smart about it.

And the record of my work speaks for itself in that regard. So why am I being - having to defend against this idea that I'm reckless? Would any man, would any war correspondent who was a man be called reckless like that? No.

After Egypt, I had to prove that I had erased everything, that I was the same person I was before I was gang-raped, you know, because that was the only sign that I could possibly be saying, no, I mean I've had -- I was told that no little girl with hair like yours would ever be taken seriously as a war correspondent. I was told by the CNN Bureau Chief in London to go cut my hair if I wanted a job there.

You know, I dealt with a lot of things. At one point, when I was at Reuters International Television, I had to channel all of the directions for breaking news stories through the boss, the Bureau Chief because the crews didn't want it retold by a young girl where they had to go and what they had to do.

LEVIN: Remarkable. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: Let me ask you this, with all the attention on a lot of Mickey Mouse stuff, internecine warfare, trying to take down the President of the United States and so forth, there's a lot going on in the world. There's a lot going on in this country even though we have 24/7 news, that's not being covered.

LOGAN: Well, as a journalist that's part of my frustration because right now in Afghanistan for example, that's a war that I've covered from the very, very beginning. My job as a journalist is to say, "Hey, wait a minute, there's something incredibly significant going on here," and we are still in this war. You've got old people jumping up about whether or not we should be there or not and no one has even asked the question, what are we doing? What are we doing there?

LEVIN: I agree with you.

LOGAN: What is our objective? What is our position on this side? I can tell you because I know some of these people and I've talked to them and I'm still talking to them as a reporter and a journalist. They don't know what they're doing there.

When the Kurds are asking them about the Turks and about our position on an independent Kurdistan and all of these other issues, the Kurds by the way who are fighting and dying --

LEVIN: Oh, they're a great people.

LOGAN: Defeating ISIS on our behalf, when they asked that question, our people, the people wearing American flags on their uniforms, they don't know what to answer. When the Turks look at them and say, "Why are you helping the Kurds, that's our Al Qaeda, what's your position on them?" Do they have an answer? They don't have an answer.

You know you go across Sinjar in Northern Iraq where the Kurds have fought, and the PKK, his name is written all over the walls.

LEVIN: PKK.

LOGAN: Yes, who are the Turks, that part of the Kurdish resistance and the Turks view them as their Al Qaeda. They are the terrorists that they're dealing with, so we haven't dealt with any of these incredibly significant strategic issues and geopolitical issues. This is the most important question as a journalist that I can ask about Afghanistan -- is the job done?

LEVIN: Is it?

LOGAN: Is Al Qaeda defeated?

LEVIN: Can it be?

LOGAN: What war in history was unwinnable? What force could never be defeated?

LEVIN: Wars are winnable, but wars never end. We won World War II. The wars never end. There's always an enemy. There's always evil. That's why you have a standing military. That's why your bases overseas. That's why we have nuclear weapons. That's why we have a Navy. That's why we have an Air Force.

LOGAN: Of course.

LEVIN: When a war is over, you don't just pack it all and --

LOGAN: But look at the political dialogue in relation to Afghanistan for the last 10 years.

LEVIN: I don't disagree with you.

LOGAN: The war is unwinnable. The war in Iraq is unwinnable. The war in Syria is unwinnable. We're surrounded by a plethora of unwinnable wars.  That is not how it works in real life, so that is automatically what tells me as a journalist, I should be thinking about this. I should be asking questions.

There isn't a lot of room in the media today to be having these conversations and covering some very significant stories and that's frustrating for people.

LEVIN: Don't forget folks to join us on Levin TV, Levin TV almost every weeknight just sign up at 844-LEVIN-TV, 844-LEVIN-TV or check us out at blazetv.com/mark, blazetv.com/mark. We'll be right back.

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LEVIN: Now Lara Logan, you covered Benghazi, too and you got hammered for that.

LOGAN: Absolutely.

LEVIN: Tell me about that.

LOGAN: Well, I will say this, there's a lot more to that story than anybody knows, but one of my favorite things to hear is all these media reporters and propaganda standing up and saying, "That wasn't being politically targeted. That was a failure of journalism." Okay, so that's the biggest joke of all because there was not a failure of journalism in that story and it's not good journalism that these propaganda groups went out there. They're not targeting you because they're worried about the standard of your reporting. They're targeting you -- their stated objective is that they're going to eliminate anything that they view as a threat to their political ideology.

LEVIN: What were they trying to do?

LOGAN: What they were trying to do was bury the substance of that story.  Greg Hicks, Chris Stevens' deputy looked at us on "60 Minutes" and he said what he had said on "The Hill" but it was much more powerful in our cameras when he said that he asked the Defense Attache and just a few minutes into that attack, if the cavalry was coming, and the Defense Attache looked at him -- now, remember, this is the man who became Acting Ambassador that night. The last person to speak to Chris Stevens when Chris Stevens was under attack, a terrorist attack in his compound, he called Greg Hicks and Greg Hicks looked at the Defense Attache and said, "Well," and he said, "I'm sorry, Greg, the cavalry ain't incoming."

And Greg Hicks said, "I felt sick in the pit of my stomach because those of us who go out on the end of the line for our country, we believe our country has our back," and in that minute, in that moment, I knew they didn't.

And I looked at him and I said, "We better tell the boys at the annex," and two of those boys died that night. That was an Al Qaeda terrorist attack that was extremely well-planned timed for the 10th Anniversary of 9/11 and those things, the substance of our reporting is what the Obama administration and the progressive political movement and Hillary Clinton's propaganda force. That's what they wanted buried, because it didn't suit them politically to have the truth out about that.

And so they picked the least important person in the story. They took two things he said and they cast it into doubt. It was called into question and then they made the story disappear. It was erased so now you can't -- all of that propaganda you read about it. You don't have the ability to tell whether it's even true or not because you can't watch the story and make up your own mind.

And there was a lot of other significant reporting in there. Think of all those people trying to tear that piece to shreds and they were only able to cast out over two things one guy of three characters had to say, right, and what I learned - the lesson I learned is that they're not going to come after you for the things that matter. They're going to come after you and use the things that don't matter and they're going to use that to bury the whole thing and silence you.

LEVIN: I wish violence we had more time. You've been a great guest.

LOGAN: Thank you, Mark.

LEVIN: I appreciate it very much. All right ladies and gentlemen, that's our show. See you next time on "Life, Liberty & Levin."

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