It's Always Miller Time

Bill Keller, posted on Poynter.org, his thoughts on the whole Judith Miller
fiasco.

Emphasis added:

Date/Time:
10/21/2005 4:06:23 PM

Title:
Memo from NYT executive editor Bill Keller

“In the end, I’m pretty sure I would have concluded
that we had to fight this case in court. For one
thing, we were facing an insidious new menace in these
blanket waivers, ostensibly voluntary, that
Administration officials had been compelled to sign.
But IF I HAD KNOWN the details of Judy’s entanglement
with Libby, I’d have been MORE CAREFUL in how the
paper articulated its defense, and perhaps more
willing than I had been to support efforts aimed at
exploring compromises.

Dick Stevenson has expressed the larger lesson here in
an e-mail that strikes me as just right:

“I think there is, or should be, a contract between
the paper and its reporters. The contract holds that
the paper will go to the mat to back them up
institutionally -- but only to the degree that the
reporter has LIVED UP TO HIS OR HER END OF THE
BARGAIN, specifically to have conducted him or herself
in a way consistent with our LEGAL, ETHICAL, AND
JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS, to have been OPEN and CANDID
with the paper about sources, mistakes, conflicts and
the like, and generally to deserve having the
reputations of all of us put behind him or her. In
that way, everybody knows going into a battle exactly
what the situation is, what we’re fighting for, the
degree to which the facts might counsel compromise or
not, and the degree to which our collective
credibility should be put on the line.”

I’ve heard similar sentiments from a number of
reporters in the aftermath of this case.

There is another important issue surfaced by this
case: how we deal with the inherent conflict of
writing about ourselves. This paper (and, indeed, this
business) has had way too much experience of that over
the past few years. Almost everyone we’ve heard from
on the staff appreciates that once we had agreed as an
institution to defend Judy’s source, it would have
been wrong to expose her source in the paper. Even if
our reporters had learned that information through
their own enterprise, our publication of it would have
been seen by many readers as authoritative -- as
outing Judy’s source in a backhanded way. Yet it is
EXCRUCIATING to WITHHOLD INFORMATION of value to our
readers, especially when rival publications are
unconstrained. I don’t yet see a clear-cut answer to
this dilemma, but we’ve received some thoughtful
suggestions from the staff, and it’s one of the
problems that we’ll be wrestling with in the coming
weeks.

Best, Bill”

###

Fascinating. My translation:

“Judith Miller, through an endless series of lies,
deceits, and underhanded behavior, has not only
prevented the Times from reporting news for the last
few years, and compelled it to actively print lies,
she also forced every employee of the paper to sink to
her level, and get them to defend her, at the cost of
the own reputations. Further, she may have embroiled
the Times in criminal conspiracy and coverup, and to
this very day refuses to be honest with her colleagues
even after they have fought for her at great cost to
themselves.

Because of a complete lack of a sense of ethics or
management at the Times, a once fine newspaper is now
regarded a cheap, bought-and-paid-for propaganda tool,
used to destroy innocent people who would dare
challenge a government misleading its own people to go
to war. Once no longer trusted, an information source
can not function. The New York Times has shredded its credibility
through misplaced loyalty and fear of political payback.
Its shattered remains litter the sidewalks of New York, as do the careers
of everyone once associated with this travesty.”

Did I miss anything?

******************************************************************