CBS News.com Misrepresents Interview With Afghan Warlord, Alters Headline

On June 17, my colleague Kyle Drennen reported a CBS "Evening News" segment wherein "correspondent Lara Logan touted what was essentially a press release from a key terrorist leader in Afghanistan."

CBS News.com headlined the article on this segment as (emphasis added) "Exclusive: Afghan Warlord Talks Resistance; Notorious Terrorist Tells CBS News' Lara Logan About Evading Capture and What He Thinks Of George Bush."

This aroused the curiosity of the good folks at ERS News, who promptly identified that Logan never interviewed this terrorist:

Lara Logan was nowhere in the story, not in the interview and not in the story itself, either in the TV version, broadcast on the CBS Evening News or the web version posted on the networks CBSNews.com. What was uncommon is that two times in the web version it say’s Logan talked with the terrorist and implied she conducted or had some kind of direct hand in interviewing Hekmatyar herself.

ERSNews contacted CBS News in New York and spoke with Evening News spokesman Jennifer Farley. ERSNews: "Did Logan conduct this interview? Was she in the country at the time? If she didn’t conduct the interview, who did? How was the videotape obtained?" Farley really didn’t know the answers and promised to get back to us by email. Later her reply was that Logan was not in Afghanistan at the time and that a [sic] she was not involved in the interview in any way.

A look at the current link to the CBS News.com article on this subject, as well as Google's cached version, clearly shows that the headline ERS News reported did exist. But, now that link (Exclusive: Afghan Warlord Talks Resistance; Notorious Terrorist Tells CBS News' Lara Logan About Evading Capture and What He Thinks Of George Bush) goes to an article with the headline, "Exclusive: Afghan Warlord Talks Resistance; Notorious Terrorist Tells CBS News About Evading Capture And What He Thinks Of George Bush."

Hmmm. Lara Logan's name no longer appears in the headline. I wonder why.