If you read The New York Times mid-week (Wednesday) you were left with the impression that one of the most pressing issues to the nation, to the world, is the fate of Judith Miller. The front page featured an article by Adam Liptak ("Jailing of Reporters In C.I.A. Leak Case Is Upheld by Judges"). This thirty-three paragraph story continues inside the paper where it's paired up with a story on the same topic by Katherine Q. Seelye ("2 Reporters Express Dismay But Say They're Resolute"). That was apparently needed in the mind of someone at the paper to "put a face on the issue." But which article was doing that? Seelye's shorter article (16 paragraphs) or Liptak's lengthy article?
Get ready because we're going to quote from Liptak's lengthy article. And brace yourself because we're going to quote every paragraph in this article that deals with the actual issue of the situation that's led to all of this. Ready? Need to run to the bathroom first? Okay, we'll wait.
Did you wash your hands? You always should but especially during flu season. Go on back to the bathroom, we'll wait.
Okay. Now from the article:
The case has its roots in an opinion article published in The Times on July 6, 2003. In it, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat, criticized a statement made by President Bush in that year's State of the Union address about Iraq's efforts to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa. Mr. Wilson based his criticism on a trip he had taken to Africa for the Central Intelligence Agency the previous year.
Eight days after Mr. Wilson's article was published, Robert Novak, the syndicated columnist, reported that "two senior administration officials" had told him that Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."
Mr. Wilson has said the disclosure was payback for his criticism. Others have said that the disclosure put his criticism in context by suggesting that Mr. Wilson's trip was not a serious one but rather a nepotistic boondoogle.
Guess what folks, that's it. That's all the news that's fit to print apparently.
Valerie Plame is outed. And the best The Times can do is to offer that some say Wilson went to Africa, according to "others," as -- well the word basically means graft.
Plame's been smeared. Now The Times joins in.
To what won't this paper stoop to protect their little Judy Miller?
(Someone should have chosen a more flattering picture for the article -- Miller's chins are more frightening from the side and rolling over her turtleneck sweater.)
Does the paper feel any sense of responsibility?
The answer has been obvious and we suggested it some time ago. You put your reporters on the story of who outed Valerie Plame (not on writing mash notes to Judy) and let them find out who outed Plame. You print that story and Miller doesn't have to go to jail.
We noted two weeks ago that this wasn't a good time for The Times to be pressing this issue in a court of law. We aren't at all surprised with the judges' verdict. Which isn't to say that we support it. It is to say that the press (including The Times) has done a shit-poor job for some time now so expecting America to rise to the defense of the press is expecting a bit much. And expecting a favorable judicial climate when the Bully Boy has declared war on the press for four years now (while The Times has largely remained silent) indicates the people behind the paper left the reality based community on the last train to Clarksville sometime ago.
The paper's reluctance to address the very serious issue of outing Valerie Plame as retaliation for Wilson's op-ed is shameful. And they can puff up Judy as plucky, as Norma Rae and Places of the Heart combined. But just because Sally Field (a trained actress) could pull off those roles (and win deserved Oscars for them) doesn't mean Judy Miller can.
And statements like her ridiculous claim that her WMD pre-war reporting resulted in "I was proved fucking right!" won't endear her to many. Her archaic tendency to hold on to the term "proved" (largely replaced with "proven") is as out of touch as the paper's belief that they can still throw their weight around and get the verdict they want.
They could once upon a time. But, like the CIA which has always provided so many "scoops" to the paper, they're out of favor with the current administration. So when the "officials" in D.C. aren't rooting for you and you turn to the masses thinking you can stir up the kind of passion that Moveon.Org can, you need to realize that many of us feel you sold us out in your attempt to curry favor with the administration.
The Times is not a brave paper. It hasn't been for most of it's history. But it's "official timeline" tendency on each and every story have left the readers indifferent to the paper of record. The paper seems to feel we will rally behind Judy Miller due to a belief in freedom of the press but The New York Times hasn't utilized the First Amendment in years. They want people to get passionate about a principle that they've long ignored.
When you're a medicore paper offering Juan Forero's apparent cheat sheets from the State Department as reporting, or when you're killing a researched story that the Bully Boy may have used an electronic device to cheat in the first debate, or when you're mocking the concerns people may have over the legitimacy of the Ohio vote . . . You may be asking too much to expect that anyone frankly gives a damn as to what happens to one of your reporters who's seen as the administration's chief propagandists.
The New York Timid has rolled over repeatedly and it didn't happen with the current administration. They have a long history of rolling over. But they've never been as useless for so long. Whether it was burying the lead on the recounted Florida votes post-9-11 (Gore won) or selling the war in Iraq, or failing to connect the dots on any story, The New York Timid has acted like a scared bunny fu-fu (imitating the Bully Boy) skipping from one story to the next, always acting as though each development is a first and not one more layer of deception.
Their big non-scoop last week was revealing (by a few hours) the report that the airline industry recevied multiple (which may be too weak a term) warnings in the months prior to 9-11.
Did they once mention in the article that FAA managers destroyed tapes? Did they bring up any past revelation (printed in their own damn rag) that might have strengthened the article?
No, because they don't do that these days. It's not just that they kill important stories, it's that when they report on something, they apparently lose all their long term memory capabilities.
In case the Gray Lady's got a touch of Alzheimer, Matthew Wald wrote a story on May 6, 2004 that began:
At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that same day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said in a report today.
The taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, where about 16 people met in a basement conference room known as "the Bat Cave" and passed around a microphone, each recalling his or her version of the events a few hours earlier.
But officials at the center never told higher-ups of the tape's existence, and it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. official described in the report as a quality-assurance manager there. That manager crushed the cassette in his hand, shredded the tape and dropped the pieces into different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.
. . .
The inspector general, Kenneth M. Mead, said that the officials' keeping the existence of the tape a secret and the decision by one to destroy it had not served "the interests of the F.A.A., the department or the public" and could foster suspicions among the public.
The industry had advance warnings. Hmm. Tapes were destroyed. Hmm. Might anyone on the tapes have noted the repeated, advanced warnings? Even if that wasn't the case, we've got another thing that we, the public, should have been informed of that the industry didn't inform us of. So isn't that pertinent to their report last week?
They want us to be outraged over the the attack on reporters when they've offered us, at best, headline news repeatedly. It's as though they've spent the last three years shooting up smack in the newsroom (instead of doing their job) and Judy just got pinched with possession. They want to play this as a national tragedy but they've destroyed their own credibility.
One way they could restore it would be to focus on what was done to Valerie Plame and by whom. Again, they need to turn their reporters loose on the story. And it is past time that they cover this story from an angle other than As the World Turns Around Little Judy.
The slam against Wilson (grift) wasn't "balance." It was a cheap shot from "others" who couldn't have their name to put to false charge. That type of tacky reporting does nothing to rally people behind Miller or the paper.
Strangely enough, we don't want to see Miller behind bars. But if the paper continues down this path, that may be exactly where she's headed. If the paper really cares about this issue, they need to do a self-inventory because Judy as the little match girl just ain't cutting it. If that's the strategy, if that passes for a full force press from The New York Timid, things are much worse at the paper than even we thought.
[We note and thank C.I. of The Common Ills and Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude for their help with this entry.]