Robert Scheer (The Nation): Judith Miller: Embedded Over Her Head

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Nation
Dated Wednesday August 24

Judith Miller: Embedded Over Her Head
By Robert Scheer

Tim Robbins, in tackling the pretenses of patriotism, has risen to a challenge that mainstream journalism has largely failed to meet. Robbins' provocative play about the Bush Administration's handling of the Iraq war and the obsequiousness of an embedded press made its TV debut Sunday on the Sundance Channel.

*Embedded/Live* nails the media's craven complicity in amplifying the drums of war. As the Los Angeles Times noted in its review of the filmed version of the play (which premiered here in 2003), when a chorus invokes the name of Robert Novak, the audience's "laughter is followed by uneasy recognition. We might wish this were old news, but it's still there staring us in the face every day."

Indeed it is, for columnist Novak was the first to "out" Valerie Plame -- wife of whistle-blower Joe Wilson, a former ambassador--as a CIA agent. The case landed New York Times reporter Judith Miller in jail, turning her into a *cause celebre* for her refusal to testify before a grand jury about her contact with sources in the Plame case. "If journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press," said Miller, dramatically equating the protection of secret sources with the survival of a free press.

But what her avowedly principled defense of journalistic sources may turn out to be is a window into the practice of official corruption of journalistic integrity in times of war, which is what Embedded/Live so effectively highlights.

Read more

[Inland]

1. Judith who? nt

[speedoo]

2. MUST READ.

I hope Miller stays in jail, at least as long as we are stuck with the CowardinChief.

[wli]

3. Operation Mockingbird at work n/t

[kansasblue]

4. Nation, Toledo Blade, Vanity Fair ...great stuff.

I got to sign up for Nation.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. It's an interesting discussion board

I post there, too. They welcome posters of all political viewpoints, so there are a number who take issue with The Nation's usual editorial position. Of these, a number are people who learned haw to argue from Rush Limbaugh, but some are actually quite intelligent and a pleasure with whom to cross swords.

TN initiated an ignore function only yesterday. Almost everybody immediately used it to tune out a right wing moron whose posts were really Coulteresque. He had a habit writing posts with the caps locked referring to "NUTTY LIBS" and other invectives, but no coherent argument.

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

6. I'm probably the only one on DU who does not

believe Miller was shilling for Shrub and his crew of criminals. I think she is taking a stand for journalism by refusing to name her sources. It wreaks that it's gotten to the point where journalists are being jailed for protecting sources.

On a personal note, I found out a few weeks ago, my uncle is related to her (he's her cousin; not sure first, second or what, but he shares her last name) and he and my aunt went to visit her in prison a couple of weeks ago. I was astonished to learn of the relation (after all, Miller is a fairly popular name). The report I got from my mother (my uncle is her brother-in-law), after speaking with my aunt and uncle after they got back, is that she is not eating and is very depressed.

My aunt, uncle and cousins are Dems, and I'm willing to bet she is, too (though journalists are, obviously "supposed" to be neutral).

Bottom line is I think there is more to the story than meets the eye, and we may have to wait it out to find out what that is.

I'm sure some of you will accuse me of being "naive" or whatever, but you'll believe what you'll want to anyway. I needed to have my say, so there we are.

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

7. From the American Journalism Review (another take on Miller):

http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3908

<snip>

But as Frank McCulloch--a former top editor at the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Examiner and one of the most astute journalists of our era--told the San Francisco Chronicle, "If the ability to protect a source is gone, inevitably sources won't talk. And everybody loses."


Miller's bold stance has provoked a decidedly mixed reaction, some of it downright hostile, even mean-spirited. There's no doubt she's a controversial figure. Miller rightly has become a poster child for the U.S. media's pathetic performance on the WMD issue. And her elbows-out style hasn't made her the most popular kid in class.


Then there's the fact that she's not protecting some noble citizen, a Karen Silkwood out to rescue the public. Nope, she has gone to jail on behalf of someone who was sleazily smearing (and perhaps endangering) a CIA operative to score cheap political points.


Some of those who think Miller should testify argue that there's a difference between safeguarding the confidentiality of a "good" source and selling out a "bad" one. That's simply a nonstarter. First of all, the ranks of valuable informants, for journalists as well as law enforcement officials, are not filled exclusively by saints. A lot of important stories are revealed by those in the belly of the beast.

<snip>

[K-W]

8. She isnt protecting sources, she is protecting liars.

Even if she isnt involved. She still isnt standing up for any rational principal. Her 'source(s)' lied to her. Her 'source(s)'were using her.

She has no journalistic obligation to protect a relationship that her 'source(s)' already violated.

She is going to jail to protect something very different. Access. She is going to jail on the principal that revealing an administration source will mean no administration source will trust her in the future. Im sure this principal is vital to modern journalism. I am also sure it is not ethical.

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

10. I agree with you on the point the sources were probably

using her (as she was using them), though the sources were using her for more sordid purposes.

I think it will be very interesting when (hopefully) the whole story comes out. I hope it comes out anyway.

I studied to be a journalist in college, and am horrified at the state of the "profession."

[K-W]

12. I mean used more in the sense of took advantage of.

Of course in a sense all sources use reporters and vice versa. What I mean is that the source(s) took advantage of Judith Miller. They compromised her. The source relationship is founded on the fact that the information is true. Not only was this information not true, it was not given in good faith. Whoever gave it must certainly have known it was not true. This is by the way is true with much of Judith Miller's previous reporting which may have also utilized the same source.

By compromising Judith Miller's journalistic credibility with intentional misinformation, the source(s) have clearly violated their privileged relationship. The journalist who's integrity has been compromised is under absolutely no ethical obligation to uphold confidentiality.

That is of course if she isn't involved.

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

13. I see your point.

[Eloriel]

9. Not naive, but not very well informed, either

Judith Miller is no Democrat. That's the first clue that you're woefully ill-informed. I challenge you to mull these over and then see if you feel the same way about her "protecting her sources" routine:

Joe Conason must read: "The Miller Crusade Diminishes the Press"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1942751#1943379
Link: http://www.observer.com/politics_joeconason.asp

E&P: Karl Rove: Using Reporters--and Abusing the First Amendment
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4021846
and: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1908252
Link: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000973352

"An attack on an administration critic, not whistle-blowing" - Fitzgerald
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1909658
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/07/06/reporters.contempt/index.html

S. Blumberg: http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/07/14/plame/print.html
In the best-case scenario for Miller, Bill Kovach believes that any pledge she may have made to a source should be invalid. Kovach is the former Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, former curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and founding director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. He describes the internal policy set within the Times on sources. "By the 1980s, we decided that we had to set some limits because reporters had been misled and the credibility of the news reports had been damaged by misleading sources. When I was chief of the bureau in Washington, we laid down a rule to the reporters that when they wanted to establish anonymity they had to lay out ground rules that if anything the source said was damaging, false or damaged the credibility of the newspaper we would identify them."

In the Plame matter, Kovach sees no obligation of the reporters to false sources. "If a man damages your credibility, why not lay the blame where it belongs? If Plame were an operative, she wouldn't have the authority to send someone. Whoever was leaking that information to Novak, Cooper or Judy Miller was doing it with malice aforethought, trying to set up a deceptive circumstance. That would invalidate any promise of confidentiality. You wouldn't protect a source for telling lies or using you to mislead your audience. That changes everything. Any reporter that puts themselves or a news organization in that position is making a big mistake."

Obviously, the Times is not imposing the rules in its present crisis that Kovach was involved in making. Are the editors unfocused on the underlying facts and falsehoods? Do the editors have a responsibility to determine who is a fair source and who is a deceiver? Has anyone fully debriefed Miller? For now, the Times is frozen in its heroic defense of the First Amendment.

Judith Miller HAS named sources in the past
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4054279&mesg_id=4054279
Link: http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/media/features/9226/index2.html

Judith Miller No Hero
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4029626&mesg_id=4029626
Link: http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=1217

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

11. I don't take too kindly to being called "woefully misinformed."

I was only stating my opinion that I think there's a lot more to meet the eye.

Second, neither you nor I accompanied Ms. Miller in the voting booth (if she even voted; Keith Olbermann admits to not voting to keep his neutrality as a reporter), so do YOU have proof she's not a Democrat?

Again, you'll believe what you want to believe; I do appreciate the links. And yes, I have read up on the subject before you bothered to "educate" me.

[Eloriel]

17. You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts

I honestly don't believe that anyone who is even passingly familiar w/Miller's work -- her role in making the war happen, for example, including her incredibly close ties with that scalawag pathological liar Chalabi, etc. -- could conceivably think of her as a Democrat.

so do YOU have proof she's not a Democrat?

Oh, please. Don't be so niave (or disingenuous). She's a neocon shill -- that's clear from her work, and I'm sorry if she's a relative of yours or soemthing, but she's a pathetic example of a journalist, a disgusting excuse for a human being, a disgrace to her sex, and she has barrels of blood on her hands: the blood of thousands of U.S military dead and wounded and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

You may go to your grave thinking of her as someone who stood up for an important journalistic principle (the right to shield sources) -- that's an opinion, not a fact, and you're entitled to it. But I'd like to think you're a clear enough thinker that once you take a close look at the rest of the facts of this situation, that won't be your opinion.

[Skittles]

14. well here is my say

Ms. Miller played the bush whore long, long before this Plame incident - she's not a journalist, she is f***ing TRASH who put the interests of the GOP *WAY* above the interests of America - she can rot in hell.

[Skittles]

15. and here is someone who would agree

he knows the score on Ms. Miller and her so-called "principles"

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20050820T200000-0500_86543_OBS_BUSH__IN_CHECK_.asp

[Jack Rabbit]

16. I am of two minds about this

Ms. Miller would not appreciate either of those minds, however.

She may have been nothing worse than a terribly sloppy journalist who got information from the rogue Chalabi and confirmed it with a neoconservative hack in the Bush regime, who probably also got information from Chalabi and accepted it not because he had any other good reason to believe it but because it fit his agenda to go to war against Iraq, regardless of the facts. Those were not independent sources. As a result, instead of having a story about Saddam's nuclear weapons program, as she reported, what she actually had was a story about Iraqi exiles who hadn't been inside the country since they were children telling Bush regime policy makers that Saddam was building nukes and, furthermore, the policy makers were acting on such "information".

Even if that's the worst thing Ms. Miller did, she should lose her job at The New York Times.

That mind assumes she was duped.

The other mind is that Ms. Miller played a deliberate and active role in advancing a fable she had no reason to believe was true for the purpose of facilitating the Bush regime's campaign of prevarications prior to invading Iraq. If that is what she did and any one can find solid evidence to support such a theory, then she should be hauled before an international tribunal along with Bush regime prevaricators and charged with war crimes. And lose her job at The New York Times.