Can you run that by me again?
In spite of the fact that I have a tendency to get lost in my own neighborhood, I am not a stupid person. And yet, I could not find my bearings in today's NYTimes piece on Judith Miller. You'd think when her own paper finally got around to explaining the whole affair, it would answer some niggling questions, like why did she go to jail to protect a source when she didn't even write a story about the supposed source's info? Instead I'm left with more question after reading the story than what I came to to table with. But I guess clarity is to much to ask for from the Times theses days. They did, after all, get scooped repeatedly on their own story.
So, why did Miller go to jail to protect a source who wanted her to testify? And if Libby was her only source on this matter, then why did she say she didn't know where she got the name Valerie Plame? (Or "Valerie Flame" as it was written in her notebook.) Why does a reporter have secret security clearance and why was "Miss Run Amok" (as she once referred to herself, according to her editor) allowed so much autonomy while working on a story about WMDs after she was told she could no longer cover Iraq and weapons issues?
This last question is what really kills me. Has the Times learned nothing from Jayson Blair? It's bad enough that the Bush administration's default mode of communication is obfuscation, misdirection and deception, but now the integrity of the watchdog covering the government has come into question. I'd like to be reveling in the fact that the current administration seems to be imploding. Instead, I'm all worked up about journalists giving journalism a bad name.
posted by judybat at 7:23 PM
7 Comments:
Is it bad that this whole story is like a big soap opera to me? I don't understand all the ins and outs, but I love following it. Judy really is getting it from all sides, and I'm beginning to think of her less as a gullible dope than as an agent of badness.
Could this be more damaging to my industry than Jayson Blair? I think so.
A few things that struck me from the Times piece:
- Judy Miller agreed to refer to Scooter Libby as a "former Hill staffer," because he didn't want the stuff he was telling her to be tied back to the administration. Doesn't that amount to lying to your readers?
- Once again, Times higher-ups failed to heed warnings about a rogue reporter.
In Jayson Blair's case, a top editor put his concerns in writing that Blair should not be allowed to continue writing for the Times. Soon after, the Boy Wonder was sent to Washington on a virtually autonomous assignment to cover the D.C. snipers.
In Miller's case, Bill Keller pulled her off WMD/Iraq reporting because he apparently didn't trust her work. Soon after, Miller was back on the WMD beat. Why? Because she wanted to, and no one at the Times seemed capable of telling her no.
Troubling, troubling, troubling.
The other weekend, we drove through Yosemite via Tuolumne Meadowns and the Tioga Pass. In defense of Scooter Libby, I can confirm that the turning aspens were, indeed, lovely.
I'm so glad to read your thoughts on this, since I really don't know what to think anymore. I was much more sympathetic to her before reading the piece on Sunday. I admire people standing up for their principles, but from what I read, she may not have had to do it at all. And I just can't believe that she truly has no recollection of who gave her the name. I do off-the-record interviews all the time, and never forget when someone gives me something particularly juicy. Troubling indeed.
The more I read the Times' account, the more this all reads like some insane farce. The craziest part being that Miller got herself out of jail after getting a Super Duper Voluntary Waiver with extra No-Coercion Sprinkles on top. And she got that by contacting Libby directly -- something she specifically promised she wouldn't do before because it might "pressure" her source.
The whole thing stinks like a high school baseball team after practice, and every time I find myself getting annoyed with Judith Miller, I get infuriated with the Times for allowing this to happen.
I can't get to the story to read it, but if she says she has a security clearance, I'm already highly skeptical about her truthfulness. I've not been involved in the world of DOD press access (NB probably knows more about this than I do, just form having been around DOD policy people), but I find it highly unlikely that a member of the press has a security clearance. Those are given to government staffers or those working for the government, in order to allow them access to secret things that they will *not* divulge but need to know to do their jobs. The job of the press is (writ large) to divulge things to as many people as possible; a person less likely, from an institutional standpoint, to get official, regular access to secrets it is hard to imagine.
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