Miller's Star Fades (Slightly) at 'NY Times' - Is More Objective WMD Coverage Coming?
by William E. Jackson, Jr.
Link to ArticleOn Sept. 29, a remarkable story appeared on the front page of The New York Times: "Agency Belittles Information Given by Iraqi Defectors; Pentagon Intelligence Review Says Debriefings Provided Little of Any Value." Far down in Douglas Jehl's report was this mea culpa: "The Iraqi National Congress [INC] had made some ... defectors available to ... The New York Times, which reported their allegations about ... the country's weapons programs."This was a rather direct repudiation of numerous stories written by Judith Miller in the Times for over a year in which she relied upon the INC's Chalabi and defectors he provided for front-page exclusives on supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. A second front-page Times story on Sept. 29, "New Criticism on Prewar Use of Intelligence," gave credit to The Washington Post for breaking the story about House Intelligence Committee complaints about the CIA. Has the Gray Lady finally turned the corner and abandoned its dependence on the faulty WMD reporting of Miller in favor of more objective journalism? Alas, this may be as far as the Times will go in executing a critical review of Miller's reporting on the search for WMD over the past year. My communications with several Times employees, past and present, depict some powerful people within the paper as still being in denial. Their rationale is that Miller produces; and that she is uniquely well-connected. A reluctant admirer said: "What Miller does have is unlimited drive and energy for a story, and fabulous sources at the upper levels of government." But Miller is not a neutral, nor an objective journalist. This can be acceptable, if you're a great reporter, "but she ain't, and that's why she's a propagandist," stated one old Times hand to me.Never mind that what Miller has done over time seriously violates several Times' policies under their code of conduct for news and editorial departments. One has only to read the long editors' note on the Wen Ho Lee case, whose principal author was Bill Keller (now the executive editor). Keller cautioned against over-reliance on partisan sources; and laid out what further measures could have been taken, and were not. More recently, Times' editors, while making sure that dissident views are note, have tended to ignore the implications as she goes right on with the WMD axe she is grinding. One major rule that she consistently violates, when she is not sharing a byline, is that of "protecting the paper's neutrality." The editors know, of course, that she is an ideological neo-conservative, close to the Bush administration neo-cons, and thoroughly identified with them. She had called for the overthrow of Saddam's regime in non-Times publications and had also spoken out before the war in public speeches for which she was paid. She is known inside the paper to be very pro-Israel. She has had an extensive relationship with Daniel Pipes' Mideast Forum. Benador Associates lists her as a speaker. She has participated in conferences funded in part by departments of the Israeli government. Israeli security services funnel information through her, sources she occasionally cites. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. If you have accounts on these bookmarking sites, you can post this story to share it with others.
|
