Bryan Preston looks at the latest example of US mainstream media disseminating the propaganda of Islamic terrorists: Lara Logan and her terrorist footage: It is too important to ignore.

If you’re not familiar with it, here’s the gist: CBS News reporter Lara Logan, currently the network’s correspondent in Baghdad, used clips in a story about fighting on Haifa Street in Baghdad that apparently came from a video that Al Qaeda’s media arm also used. In her story she didn’t attribute the video to Al Qaeda, but described it as “gruesome pictures obtained by CBS.” They’re gruesome indeed, depicting slain Iraqi Army soldiers after the battle, and showing people walking around the room where the dead men are laying and even apparently picking through their uniforms. In looking at both the Logan report and the video that Al Qaeda released after the January 7 battle, I’ve come to the conclusion that not only did Logan use the same video that Al Qaeda used, but that she worked from the same source tape as well. That means that in all likelihood her source and the source from which Al Qaeda obtained the video (which may be someone actually in AQ or merely connected to it) are one and the same.

Apparently I have a basic misunderstanding of the principles of journalism, because I never thought “impartiality” was supposed to extend to terrorist propaganda.