NEWSNir Rosen Tells Anderson Cooper He Didn't Know All the Lara Logan Assault Details
Feb. 17 2011, Published 5:07 a.m. ET
Nir Rosen, the U.S. journalist who thoughtlessly joked about CBS reporter Lara Logan's sexual assault on Twitter, made a satellite appearance on Anderson Cooper's show last night to apologize and explain himself. Anderson, who was also the subject of some disrespectful Tweets from Rosen, demanded answers from the journalist, whose insensitivity on the social networking site forced him to quit his position as an NYU fellow.
Rosen explained he was a "jerk" for writing his tweets, but promised he was unaware of full details of what had happened to Lara when his tweeting pandemonium began.
Anderson doubted that Rosen was unaware of the details since he tweeted the CBS news statement.
OK! NEWS: JOURNALIST NIR ROSEN DISRESPECTS INJURED CBS REPORTER LARA LOGAN ON TWITTER
Before he introduced Rosen, he read one of his insensitive tweets: "Yes, yes, it's wrong what happened to her, of course. I don't support that. But it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson, too."
"You seem to be saying it would be funny if I were sexually assaulted or more violently assaulted in some way than I had already been, again, what appears to be a clear indication you knew what kind of attack Logan had suffered," Anderson said.
Rosen, who was speaking to Anderson via satellite from the Middle East, denied this.
But he did continue to apologize: "I was a jerk."
In light of his remarks, Rosen resigned from his fellowship from NYU's Center on Law and Security.
He explained he was tweeting at 2 a.m. and "was being thoughtless, forgetting that I wasn't just talking to a couple of people, but I was talking, in theory, to hundreds of thousands of people."
Anderson continued to press Rosen on whether he read the CBS statement on Lara, which said she suffered a "brutal and sustained sexual assault."
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The CNN anchor did not understand how Rosen could not have read such the short statement before linking on Twitter.
"Yes, I should have read it," Rosen said. "I just heard the word assault, not that that's just — no matter what I say, it doesn't sound good."
"You honestly want people to believe that you were linking to a CBS News statement that you yourself had not read?" Anderson fired back.
"I was sort of re-tweeting," Rosen explained. "I heard the word assault. I figured, OK, many journalists are being pushed around and roughed up. Here's one more."
Rosen also explained his Twitter rant cam out of a frustration that "dozens of women suffered from this attack, and one of them is going to get all the attention because she's white and she's a celebrity correspondent. I'm not — again, I'm not defending myself here or justifying it, but just explaining.
Rosen, who claims to be a radical proponent of women's rights — once again apologized to Lara, her family and "women everywhere."
Catch the interview below. Do you believe Rosen's apology?
