NEW YORK -- CBS News correspondent Lara Logan will no longer be hosting the annual press freedom awards dinner hosted by the Committee to Protect Journalists on Tuesday night, as she had long been scheduled to do.
Logan's appearance would have been notable given that she remains embroiled in a controversy over last month’s discredited “60 Minutes” report on the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Logan has not spoken publicly about the report since apologizing for it on air. Joseph Burkett, Logan's husband, ushered a Newsweek reporter out of their house last week.
“60 Minutes” still hasn’t answered numerous questions about how the story -- which featured an unreliable “eyewitness” to the attack and several factual errors -- made it on air. CBS News is currently conducting an internal review into the matter.
A CPJ spokeswoman confirmed Logan would not be hosting but had no additional comment. Scott Pelley, who anchors “CBS Evening News,” is now scheduled to host the event.

The CPJ dinner, which honors intrepid journalists working in difficult conditions, is not usually a controversial event. But in addition to the Logan situation, Hong Kong journalist Ying Chan has called on Bloomberg L.P. chief executive Dan Doctoroff, who is chairman of the event, to step down from that role.
In recent weeks, Bloomberg News has faced allegations that it has censored itself in China to preserve business interests there.
Sandra Mims Rowe, chairman of the CPJ Board of Directors, said in a statement to ChinaFile that the organization is pleased to have Doctoroff speak Tuesday night.
Disclosure: Arianna Huffington, chair, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, is a presenter at Tuesday night's awards dinner.


YouTube Addresses Massive Spam Problem Following Rollout Of Much-Maligned Google+ Commenting System

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Google says it’s taking steps to address the increase in YouTube comment spam that arose from the recent shift to the new commenting system powered by Google+. YouTube users have already been fairly displeased with the new system for reasons related to privacy, confusion, and the ability to leave anonymous comments, having already left over 31,000 comments of their own on a video postannouncing the changes, many negative. In addition, the most popular petition begging Google to reconsider a move back to the old system has over 215,000 signatures today.
Google+, which is both a destination website and social layer meant to stretch across all Google-owned properties, has been seeping into everything Google puts out, including Search, Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Blogger, and more. It has also sucked up properties like Picasa and Places, which are now Google+ Photos and Google+ business pages, respectively, into the Google+ identity machine.
But YouTube, Google’s already successful and profitable social networking site, is another matter. Here, users had long established identities of a sort – ones they don’t necessarily want linked to their real names, and ones where they’ve connected with and messaged other YouTube users over the years.
On the YouTube video detailing the change to Google+ comments, there’s an overlay reading: “Thanks for your feedback. We know there are issues with spam and abuse in the new system and we’re working hard to fix them. Click here to learn more.” That link has been directing viewers to a November 6 post on the official YouTube Creators blog, which was updated mid-November with a further acknowledgement of the spam and abuse problems and a promise that fixes were in the works.
It was close as Google got to an admission of failure in terms of its implementation of Google+ comments on YouTube. It’s clear the company didn’t think through the ramifications of a system which would allow Google+ users to include links or other random text in their YouTube comments.
For instance, some commenters are now using ASCII text to leave picture comments, which isn’t abusive as much as it is disruptive – it’s probably not the “high quality” feedback Google had in mind when making this change.