60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan has cut back on her work for the CBS News newsmagazine as she focuses on her children, including her son, Joseph Washington Burkett V, who battles dyslexia and ADHD. She’s also moved to Texas, to a town outside Austin where her husband Joe Burkett, a retired Army Master Sergeant, grew up.
“I needed to be a mom, and I needed to be the kind of mom that I wanted to be. I’m all in,” Logan says in an interview with People.
Logan’s most recent report was a March profile of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Before that, in a story that aired in November 2015, Logan returned to her conflict reporting roots covering the fight against ISIS in Northern Iraq. Stepping back from 60 Minutes comes after several tumultuous years for Logan.
In 2011, while reporting on the Arab Spring in Egypt, she was sexually assaulted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. “The road is very long. There is just pieces of you left after that,” she said. Then, in 2012, Logan was diagnosed with breast cancer. In 2013, her botched report on the attack on the U.S Consulate in Benghazi led to an on-air apology. She was forced to take a 7-month leave of absence and returned to CBS in the summer of 2014.
Logan, a native of South Africa, and Burkett have two children, 7-year-old Joe and 6-year-old Lola. Burkett’s 11-year-old daughter Ashley also lives with the family.
“I really believe in being there for my kids, and I really believe that I can help Joe learn how to read and write,” she says.
“I knew what to do when I was on the ground in Tahrir Square, I had to stand up. When I was on my way home, I had to start rebuilding. When I saw my children, I had to live. Those things were very clear.”