Salon: Not Fit to Print (Judith Miller)

[kskiska]

How Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraq war lobby used New York Times reporter Judith Miller to make the case for invasion.

By James C. Moore

When the full history of the Iraq war is written, one of its most scandalous chapters will be about how American journalists, in particular those at the New York Times, so easily allowed themselves to be manipulated by both dubious sources and untrustworthy White House officials. Insufficiently skeptical reporters were duped into running stories that misled the nation about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. The Times finally acknowledged its grave errors in an extraordinary and lengthy editors note published Wednesday. The editors wrote:

"We have found ... instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been ... In some cases, the information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge ... We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight."

The editors conceded what intelligence sources had told me and numerous other reporters: that Ahmed Chalabi, head of the exiled Iraqi National Congress, was feeding bad information to journalists and the White House and had set up a situation with Iraqi exiles where all of the influential institutions were shouting into the same garbage can, hearing the same echo. "Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations -- in particular, this one."

The reporter on many of the flawed stories at issue was Judith Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and authority on the Middle East. The Times, insisting that the problem did not lie with any individual journalist, did not mention her name. The paper was presumably trying to take the high road by defending its reporter, but the omission seems peculiar. While her editors must share a large portion of the blame, the pieces ran under Miller's byline. It was Miller who clearly placed far too much credence in unreliable sources, and then credulously used dubious administration officials to confirm what she was told.

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/27/times/index.html

[Warpy]

1. The PBS News Hour deconstructed Miller tonight

All she could manage to do was splutter something incoherent about her sources.

Maybe being the White House stenographer in the major media is not going to be quite as comfortable a position from now on.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. So Pulitzer should yank her prize.

She got it for her post-911 "reporting."

[umtalal]

3. is she going to get fired?

who will she work for afterword: the weekly standard? LOL@miller

[umtalal]

4. is she going to get fired?

who will she work for afterword: the weekly standard? LOL@miller:headbang:

[myopic4141]

5. Here is a question.

The NYT did a retrospective piece on how they got it wrong before the war. Fine; but, how do we undo what was done? There is no bringing back the lives lost (innocent or not) on either side. The wounded are not going to be unwounded nor are the maimed going to be made whole again. How do we return the moral authority that has been lost to us so as to prevent future preemptive wars or advance human rights and dignity after the atrocities that were committed in our name. When something could have been done, it was not and now we have to suffer the consequences of our actions. Too many times we have done retrospectives on mistakes made; yet, we have not learned for we keep on making the same mistakes over and over. Nothing ever really changes. There may be more retrospectives in the works regarding how we got here from other media outlets; but, those will not matter much more than making that particular media outlet feel better.
I do not see any change in the foreseeable future either. The media will continue to get it wrong because it is much easier than getting it right. Even now, the media only parrots what they are told. Never questioning what is said to them. Those who got it wrong are still in charge of what we see and hear and if there is no change in the who, why expect change anywhere.

[Dudley_DUright]

6. Judy is totally clueless

Miller, who knew all of this already at the time I interviewed her, remained righteously indignant, unwilling to accept that she had goofed up in the grandest of fashions.

"You know what," she offered angrily. "I was proved fucking right. That's what happened. People who disagreed with me were saying, 'There she goes again.' But I was proved fucking right."

Um no Judy, you were proved fucking wrong, again and again and again. :eyes: