Alterman: Judy, Judy, Judy

[dArKeR]

Judy, Judy, Judy  Judith Miller has a story co-bylined in today’s Times entitled “Former Oil-for-Food Director Criticizes Security Council,” but really, why should anyone believe anything in it? Even though it did finally break down and publish an editor’s note dealing with the myriad fabrications to which the paper lent itself via Miller’s propagandizing for war, it never really came clean as to how and why the paper allowed her to bend so many ostensible journalistic rules in order to make them happen.  No less significantly, given its refusal to come clean on the magnitude of its failure, the paper has not explained what safeguards it has put into place to ensure that Miller and those reporters who emulate her methods do not continue to employ the unequaled power of the paper’s news columns to do the same in the future.

I think that Bill Keller is taking the lesson of Howell Raines here.  Raines has recently mused that he made a terrible PR mistake in slewing entire forests to dissect the Jayson Blair mess and therefore blew up the story way out of proportion.  (And he is right by the way.  A nexis search of Jayson Blair will turn up far more hits than one taken up around the same time regarding the untruths put forth by the Bush administration to take the country into war.)  Raines probably could have weathered the storm if he had done his dirty work with greater discretion.  With Miller, the problem got so large Keller couldn’t ignore it but he still tried to sweep large portions of it under the rug.  Unfortunately, the lump it left was too large to disregard.  The New York Magazine profile of her demonstrated that the problems with her reporting and the manner in which she did her job were, if anything, a far greater scandal than Blair, whose reporting, after all, didn’t have many implications beyond those people mentioned in his stories.  Miller’s “reporting” helped legitimize a war that threatens to spin out of control.  Dan Okrent also deserves kudos for a column that went far further than any of the top brass could have appreciated in his public editor’s column.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/

[StClone]

1. This is a set up

They came clean as soon as it became apparent that Bush is toast. Gives them free range to rip on Kerry once the guy wins. This is some cheap trick to come clean for ulterior motives.

[bemildred]

2. The state propaganda organs do not suddenly become the trumpets of truth.

Indeed. Let them stay discredited I say, who can trust them
again?