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Journalist Resigns After Mocking Lara Logan's Sexual Assault on Twitter

by Amar Toor on February 17, 2011 at 10:30 AM

nir rosen and lara logan
Journalist Nir Rosen has resigned from his post at New York University, after posting a series of controversial and unbelievably stupid tweets about Lara Logan -- the CBS News correspondent who was physically and sexually assaulted by a mob in Cairo earlier this month.

On February 15th, Rosen tweeted that the correspondent was simply trying to keep up with Anderson Cooper, who had also been attacked in Egypt. "Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson. Where was her buddy McCrystal," read one tweet, which has since been deleted from Rosen's account. "Yes yes it's wrong what happened to her," read another. "Of course. I don't support that. But it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too." He went on to say that everyone should remember her as a "war monger," rather than glorifying her as a "martyr."

At one point, the former NYU fellow appeared to realize that his tweets were moronic, and offered his version of an "apology." A subsequent tweet read: "Ah f--k it, I apologize for being insensitive, its always wrong, that's obvious, but I'm rolling my eyes at all the attention she will get." He then offered a slightly more appropriate mea culpa: "i apologize and take it back. joking with friends got out of line when i didnt want to back down. forgot twitter is not exactly private."

Although Rosen deleted his offensive tweets, they still raised eyebrows. Yesterday, Rosen submitted his resignation to NYU's Center on Law and Security. "Nir Rosen is always provocative, but he crossed the line with his comments about Lara Logan," the center's executive director Karen J. Greenberg said in a statement. "I am deeply distressed by what he wrote about Ms. Logan, and strongly denounce his comments."

In an e-mail to Media Bistro, the journalist explained that his tweets were only intended to "provoke a friend on Twitter," adding that he doesn't take sexual assault lightly. "When you're in war zones you develop a black humor," said Rosen, who has covered the Iraq War extensively. And, while he hasn't deleted his Twitter account, Rosen says he's not really interested in using it anymore. "I have certainly lost any desire to use twitter mostly because I am ashamed of what happened and I'm eager to retreat from the public spotlight I brought upon myself," he wrote.

Tags: AndersonCooper, cairo, egypt, lara logan, lara+logan+assault, LaraLogan, laraloganassault, media, nir+rosen, NirRosen, politics, SexualAssault, SocialNetworking, top, twitter, Web

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