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The Infuriating Judy Miller
What to do with former NY Times reporter Judy Miller? In a speech to Kansas State students, Miller made several commonsense points about secrecy in government. From the Topeka Capital-Journal:
[Miller] said the balance between national security and civil liberties has been tipped, allowing the Bush administration to become secretive about its decisions, intrusive into public lives and reluctant to share information the public has a right to know..."We are less free and less safe," she said.
Right on. But then there's this gem, which comes during a fret about weakening standards of journalism:
"I'm worried about bloggers," she said. "(A post) starts as a rumor and within 24 hours it's repeated as fact."
Let's talk about standards of journalism, shall we? Judy Miller repeatedly pushed questionable intelligence -- most of which turned out to be false -- on the front pages of the New York Times, influencing public debate on the question of whether or not to go to war. Because Miller was at best a careerist blinded by phenomenal access who simply didn't ask enough questions and at worst the knowing crony of a dishonest administration, the influences exerted on that debate were exactly the ones the Bush Administration, trying to make a case for an unsupportable war to an unconvinced public, wanted. Miller then went to jail, supposedly to protect the first amendment rights of journalists, while actually protecting the reputation and career of a crook of a source (but reliable for high-level leaks!) bent on destroying the reputation and career of a husband-wife team opposed to the administration's policies.
So, yeah, keeping fighting the good fight, Judy.
From the Mother Jones Iraq War Timeline, an example of Judy Miller's role in leading a nation to war.
December 20, 2001: New York Times reporter Judith Miller writes a front-page story for the paper titled "AN IRAQI DEFECTOR TELLS OF WORK ON AT LEAST 20 HIDDEN WEAPONS SITES." The source is a man delivered to Miller by Ahmed Chalabi. The man failed a CIA polygraph test before the article came out, and his claims were discredited by informed intelligence experts. The polygraph is not mentioned in Miller's story. "Government experts" call his information "reliable and significant."
Judy Miller got suckered. To her credit she kept her integrity by refusing to divulge her source, even if it meant going to prison and I am quite sure that as the depth of this power play unfolded she may well have felt an uncomfortable sense of angst?she was as they say out of her league. In the big leagues where she found herself, her role as a person that could potentially put big fish behind bars is a liability. It's not just in Hollywood where liabilities have timely accidents. Who was her source(s) anyways? She strikes me as a scapegoat for how the entire main stream American media failed the American public. No one with any weight said a damn thing. Hans Blix was painted as incompetent, while his message was crystal clear;
"One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist (WMD). However, that possibility is not excluded."
The UN was more or less accused of being soft on Saddam, a collage debating team, as being anti-American, as being incompetent, they were naïve (being fooled) and so on and then they were suddenly in the palm of France (like China or Russia bow to the whims of France), hence those famous words, "I want Bush to decide not Paris". It is rather incredible and yet the mouthpiece of Bush was the American media.
In terms of National Security the lesson is clear; that politicized intelligence is in fact the number one threat to National Security. That people who are employed by our government to access danger to our nation are not allowed to state the facts as they stand but instead are being employed to create a desired conclusion, employed to ascertain facts that fit the party line or else they lose their jobs; that is they are employed to find facts that support an already determined policy, instead of policy being defined according to the facts that they are uncovered. That is basically the kind of nation we live in?obey the party line or else! How is this any different from the Soviet Union? Anyone who says that our nation has had its interests served by the Iraq War is a liar. It's that simple. But still oil companies have earned trillions, and the military industrial complex has earned billions while the intelligence community in spite of its complete failure has seen its sphere of power considerably increased. Nothing like good government!
Judy Miller got suckered. To her credit she kept her integrity by refusing to divulge her source, even if it meant going to prison and I am quite sure that as the depth of this power play unfolded she may well have felt an uncomfortable sense of angst?she was as they say out of her league. In the big leagues where she found herself, her role as a person that could potentially put big fish behind bars is a liability. It's not just in Hollywood where liabilities have timely accidents. Who was her source(s) anyways? She strikes me as a scapegoat for how the entire main stream American media failed the American public. No one with any weight said a damn thing. Hans Blix was painted as incompetent, while his message was crystal clear;
"One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist (WMD). However, that possibility is not excluded."
The UN was more or less accused of being soft on Saddam, a collage debating team, as being anti-American, as being incompetent, they were naïve (being fooled) and so on and then they were suddenly in the palm of France (like China or Russia bow to the whims of France), hence those famous words, "I want Bush to decide not Paris". It is rather incredible and yet the mouthpiece of Bush was the American media.
In terms of National Security the lesson is clear; that politicized intelligence is in fact the number one threat to National Security. That people who are employed by our government to access danger to our nation are not allowed to state the facts as they stand but instead are being employed to create a desired conclusion, employed to ascertain facts that fit the party line or else they lose their jobs; that is they are employed to find facts that support an already determined policy, instead of policy being defined according to the facts that they are uncovered. That is basically the kind of nation we live in?obey the party line or else! How is this any different from the Soviet Union? Anyone who says that our nation has had its interests served by the Iraq War is a liar. It's that simple. But still oil companies have earned trillions, and the military industrial complex has earned billions while the intelligence community in spite of its complete failure has seen its sphere of power considerably increased. Nothing like good government!
Seems to me JM is (among other things) guilty of shamelessly pandering to the public's post-9/11 frenzy - serving up the kind of story that was angled to support the argument for war (or put another way, fuel our collective hunger to take revenge on those who appeared to be complicit in the attack on America). No doubt her work helped sell newspapers, at least for awhile.
Yes, I agree that Judy lacks credibility and integrity as a serious journalist, but let us not forget the hundreds, if not
thousands, of journalists nationwide who likewise failed completely to maintain a respectable degree of objectivity. Just as we've only begun to ferret out the bozos in gov't, we need to keep after the bozos in journalism. We deserve smart reporters who will tell us the truth. Hell, we *need* smart reporters who will tell us the truth.
Your post is a good start and I thank you for it, but I can't help but wonder how much stomach the progressive media has to go after their sisters and brothers in the same business. Is this the beginning of something bigger or just a random shot across the bow?
The Plame case has no relevance to media rights. Since there was no possible "public interest" in outing Plame, this example of divulging classified information isn't justifiable. And in this case the beneficiary of the illegal disclosure was a foriegn power (the Iraqi government-in-exile). Smells like espionage to me. I think they are all lucky to not be facing the death penalty.
Judy Miller got suckered. To her credit she kept her integrity by refusing to divulge her source, even if it meant going to prison and I am quite sure that as the depth of this power play unfolded she may well have felt an uncomfortable sense of angstshe was as they say out of her league. In the big leagues where she found herself, her role as a person that could potentially put big fish behind bars is a liability. It's not just in Hollywood where liabilities have timely accidents. Who was her source(s) anyways? She strikes me as a scapegoat for how the entire main stream American media failed the American public. No one with any weight said a damn thing. Hans Blix was painted as incompetent, while his message was crystal clear;
"One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist (WMD). However, that possibility is not excluded."
The UN was more or less accused of being soft on Saddam, a collage debating team, as being anti-American, as being incompetent, they were naïve (being fooled) and so on and then they were suddenly in the palm of France (like China or Russia bow to the whims of France), hence those famous words, "I want Bush to decide not Paris". It is rather incredible and yet the mouthpiece of Bush was the American media.
In terms of National Security the lesson is clear; that politicized intelligence is in fact the number one threat to National Security. That people who are employed by our government to access danger to our nation are not allowed to state the facts as they stand but instead are being employed to create a desired conclusion, employed to ascertain facts that fit the party line or else they lose their jobs; that is they are employed to find facts that support an already determined policy, instead of policy being defined according to the facts that they are uncovered. That is basically the kind of nation we live inobey the party line or else! How is this any different from the Soviet Union? Anyone who says that our nation has had its interests served by the Iraq War is a liar. It's that simple. But still oil companies have earned trillions, and the military industrial complex has earned billions while the intelligence community in spite of its complete failure has seen its sphere of power considerably increased. Nothing like good government!
My understanding of Judith Miller is that she is a member of the ultra-right wing group, Middle East Forum. This group is headed by Daniel Pipes, a notorious right-winger who has started a group encouraging students to "inform" on professors teaching "leftist" views on the Middle East.
Judith Miller is not simply a dupe, a naive woman in over her head. She is an ideologue. If she was deceived, it was because the deceptions she was being fed fit in with her own world view which she wanted to promote.
She had also written a book on unconventional weapons. Every time she wrote a "Saddam has WMD" story, she was potentially increasing her book sales.
The NYT management was guilty of gross incompetence or worse when they published this woman's articles without identifying her biases.
I guess that it just goes to show that there is some good and some not so good in all of us. Bush got the country "likered" up down at the saloon and like a drunken mob, America for the most part followed him to the "lynching" of the government of Iraq.
I think that the columist, (Republican Cnn's) who printed her name, was doing the administration's dirty work, but yet they didn't put him in jail nor did he have to disclose the high official in the Bush Administration who leaked her name. If the American people can't see that for what it is... then we as a Nation are worse off than I would have thought.
Judith Miller is just another Bush/Repub/neocon mouthpiece/ shill and corrupt journalistic prostitute. She should be worknig for Fox News.
Speaking in Kansas, Miller is preaching to the choir, those people are religious and they USE religion for politics and politics for religion.
Kansans have forgotten Render to Caesar... and render to God...
I am a Catholic but not the kind of Catholic that mixes religion and politics as most catholics are.
Judith Miller, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and all the msm are the reason why journalism is irrelevant and dying. The demise of american journalism is of their own doing. They lie to the american people and by doing so are not only contributing to their own demise but seriously damaging the very fabric of our beloved american society.
Take journalism and religion out of american politics and we all would be a lot better off. The tryanny of religion and the repub party has with the help of the msm deeply fractured and divided our once great and unified country.
Pray for peace
Only diplomacy, never war and killing
'They' did not attack us, only Osama bin Laden did, and his suporters in the Saudi family and their country.