Investigative reporter and essayist Russ Baker is a
longtime contributor to TomPaine.com. He is the
founder of the Real News Project, a new organization dedicated
to producing groundbreaking investigative journalism. He can
be reached at russ@russbaker.com.
The Wicked Witch of the Eastern Media
Establishment is gone! Long live The New York
Times!
Well, hooray, I suppose. Though if that refrain is the
final word on the Judith Miller saga, we’re in deeper trouble
than I thought. To be sure, I’ve been as outspoken as anyone
about the "Miller problem"—her credulous, duplicitous hyping
of non-existent WMDs; her enthusiastic prejudging and
exaggeration of complicated "oil-for-food" allegations
involving Kofi Annan and the United Nations. But now that
she has finally "resigned," let it be said that getting rid of
Judy Miller is only the beginning of the reforms necessary at
The New York Times and in journalism generally.
For one thing, the Times’ leadership has still not
come clean about the process and values that allowed someone
so compromised and controversial even within her own newsroom
to continue to operate with impunity. The paper’s position
belatedly shifted from there being no problem at all with its
Iraq coverage to there having been a lamentable but
understandable industry-wide screw-up caused by faulty
sources, to, finally, there being a Miller problem—when in
fact it is about something bigger: the failings
of theTimes itself, and of all journalism in the
age of Bush.
Miller was not some rogue operator. She was a star at
America’s most prestigious news organization. Whatever her
journalism was about, she certainly never understood the
journalistic dictum "afflict the comfortable and comfort the
afflicted." She loved all things gilded and powerful, and
thrilled at the company of the connected. She was unique in
the Times newsroom because, like Sally Field at the
Academy Awards so many years ago, she could say of people like
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld: “They like me! They really
like me!”
For good reason, leading establishment figures don’t
usually like, trust or count on journalists—nor should they.
They’re entitled to a hearing, but nothing more. The
sausage-making process behind the power facades is scarcely
pleasant, and it’s our job to tell it the way it is, not to
bestow additional gravitas and authority where it is
ill-deserved.
For years, Miller’s work largely involved talking regularly
with the likes of Cheney and Scooter Libby—and calling the
opposing side for comments, though rarely taking informed
outsider critiques seriously. That’s not doing the spade work
of an honorable trade. Indeed, treating reporters who work the
government side of the road as necessary ‘balancers’
grievously negates the reality of today’s America.
Too many journalistic institutions are living in an idyllic
past. The uniquely American notion of objective journalism, of
reporting both perspectives and letting readers decide for
themselves, while admirable, is increasingly meaningless.
Especially when one’s job is to referee between a six-headed,
hundred-tongued hydra and the tactical equivalent of
Bambi.
Miller liked to say that the issue wasn’t whether or not
she got the story wrong, but that the sources were wrong, and
the Times leadership took up this chant as well.
Sorry, folks. The essence of good journalism is not reporting
what people say, but figuring out who is telling the truth.
Miller had it all precisely….wrong. In her world, Ahmad
Chalabi was an informed source, Kofi Annan, a scoundrel.
As we all know by now, the Bush administration is
unsurpassed in its willingness to distort, mislead, stall,
dissemble and fabricate. And that puts journalism in a bind:
If your job is to report on government but the government
itself cannot be trusted, what do you do?
When we think of other countries in difficult straits, the
journalists we invoke and honor are not those who maintain a
good relationship with tainted regimes, who serve as
mouthpieces, who make them sound reasonable. It was not the
news outlets that gave a platform to Pinochet and Brezhnev and
Saddam Hussein that we admire. It was those who resisted, who
spoke the truth to power and to the public, no matter the
cost. Those who went to jail in such circumstances did not do
so for self-serving or publicity purposes or to protect
potentates, and the imprisoned often were not just reporters
but their editors and publishers as well. At the
Times , Judy Miller went to jail to protect the real
story of her dealings with Scooter Libby on WMDs, while her
publisher and longtime close friend, Arthur Sulzberger Jr.,
trumpeted her as a hero.
That The New York Times is still the best paper
out there is not surprising, since it has the resources and
allure to attract the most accomplished, most energetic, most
experienced reporters. Nevertheless, in the face of the
staggering opportunities for muckraking afforded by the Bush
administration, the Times has been a major
disappointment. And when others stumbled while trying to get
at difficult truths about Bush, as CBS' "60 Minutes II" did
when probing the president’s military record, the
Times was only too glad to pile on with the critics,
rather than focus on advancing public understanding of the
underlying issue: the integrity and character of our
war-mongering leader.
Now, with Miller gone, the paper has a chance to show that
taking brave risks for the truth, not accommodating power, is
the only honorable course for journalists who want to
exemplify the best of their
profession.
.gif){kind=spacer}
.gif){kind=spacer}
.gif){kind=spacer}
