Lara Logan, born March 29^th, 1971, is an award-winning foreign correspondent for CBS news and an investigative journalist for 60 Minutes. Logan was raised in Durban, South Africa, where she studied a degree in commerce and developed a passion for experiencing global cultures.

On September 26^th, Logan explained to The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) students how upholding her personal integrity helped shape her journalistic practice. Logan said, “my drive was always that I could learn enough, that I understood and could make sense of it to tell other people.” This motivation inspires the stories Logan chooses to investigate and report.

Logan highlighted to students how experiencing conflict first hand ensures the news she reports is not only engaging, but truthful. Her motivation to share perspectives has resulted in her travelling to trenches in Afghani war zones and venturing on Alaskan whaling boats. This ensures she captures and reports accurate stories.  “If you don’t understand it, how can you explain it to someone else”, she said.

Dangerous conditions don’t deter Logan’s drive to break the news. She told TCNJ students “when I was in Bagdad as the city was falling, nobody from CBS would go with me, in fact they did everything they could to sabotage me.” Despite advisement against entering the volatile warzone, Logan covered the story on her own for the morning, evening, weekend news and 60 minutes using a camera and a phone.

Logan’s firm ethics and drive to report truthful news demands critical thinking and an unprejudiced perspective. The importance of using these skills was reinforced to Logan following her investigative report of the Benghazi attacks, aired on 60 minutes. The report shared Dylan Davies’s experiences in an attack that claimed the lives of four U.S. personnel. Davies recounted that the tragedy was a result of poor U.S. preparation however, upon further investigation it became evident that Davies was not present the night of the attack.

Logan publicly apologised for the inaccuracies in her story, recognising the importance of critically analysing all facts and perspectives during investigation. She told students “You need to be as critical a thinker of the people you like or the people you agree with or find credible as you are of the people you find offensive and you disagree with.”

Logan’s first-hand investigation of breaking news has informed skills as a writer and perspective when reporting conflict. Her experiences and desire to uphold her personal integrity, shape her practice as a writer and journalist.