Judy Miller Responds To Criticism Of Her Julian Assange Comments

Judy Miller responded to the backlash she received for calling WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange a "bad journalist" during a Fox News show over the weekend.

Miller voiced her criticism on Saturday's "Fox News Watch." She said Assange "didn't care at all about attempting to verify the information that he was putting out or determine whether or not it would hurt anyone."

Miller was immediately accused of hypocrisy, since she is most famous for writing stories about Iraq's weapons programs that turned out to be false. An old quote of hers was also unearthed, where she said that her job "isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself."

In an email to Yahoo's Cutline blog, Miller defended herself and insisted she was in a different journalistic category than Assange:

"If anybody bothered to read the Iraq war stories they're now so busy criticizing, they would see that Julian Assange and I were involved in very different kinds of journalism. They are not morally equivalent. While we both sought to publicize official secrets, I and my co-authors at The NYT spent enormous time trying to verify the secret government reports and other WMD-related stories we published. Every exclusive story of mine appeared with a discussion of its context, the difficulty involved in corroborating the highly classified information, and an assessment by at least one independent expert and likely skeptic... Julian Assange, whom I have repeatedly defended, did none of these things...I stand by my criticism of this aspect of his work, as well as by my conclusion that he should not be punished or even faulted for trying to ferret out government secrets."

To read the full contents of the email, go to the Cutline blog.

She also explained her recent work for conservative magazine Newsmax, saying she had been given an "excellent offer" that allowed her a rare opportunity to do serious, long-form journalism.

Comments

[plaidsportcoat]

03:07 PM on 01/19/2011

From now on, nobody in the entire world of public figures will EVER admit they were wrong. Only normal humans will continue to do this in order to avoid extreme conflict throughout their daily lives.

[waynesmyer]

08:11 AM on 01/16/2011

Judy!Judy,Judy! Why is everybody a picking on you? Were you behind the door when they handed out the brains?

[JayEsbe]

05:30 AM on 01/16/2011

SHUT UP JUDY. JUST SHUT UP. The "Difference" between you and Assange is that Assange isn't on a black-budget CIA pay-roll as a government propagandist, and UNLIKE your "information", Assange hasn't been proven wrong, corrupt, and dishonest.

You should NEVER, EVER have been heard from again. You've got a lot of nerve to show your face. Now SHUT IT!

[GreenPowerMan]

02:51 PM on 01/12/2011

I'm here to criticize her criticism of the criticism of her criticism.

[jimpager]

02:21 AM on 01/11/2011

"If anybody bothered to read the Iraq war stories they're now so busy criticizing, they would see that Julian Assange and I were involved in very different kinds of journalism."

And what journalism were you involved with on Iraq??? Oh, Bush's cheerleader.
Miller even looks a bit like SNL's Cheri Oteri. She's right. They ARE different.
Assange is nothing like Will Ferrell.

[bccmeteorites]

08:48 AM on 01/09/2011

She's a tabloid journalist. The lowest kind.

[spikeysnack]

11:05 PM on 01/07/2011

If Wikileaks published false info -- it would be loudly criticized at great volume for being a lying mouthpiece for the left. It doesn't. All the hubub about Julian Assange is a misdirection about the
near complete lack of follow up on these earth-shattering revelations which are verified as true.
"Consider The Source" -- Personal attacks on the messenger or actual documents form involved players?
Consider the Relative Importances" -- someone leaked info or someone commited murder, bribery, drug dealing, coercion, etc. ? -- a heretofre relatively obscure website manager or the heads of state and ambassadors of great nations and armies? So who should get the "hairy eyeball" here? Not Assange -- Bush, Cheney, Wolfewitz, Carzai, The Swiss banks ...

[greysells2]

08:55 AM on 01/07/2011

Doesn't a journalist have to have integrity and a code of ethics? And work hard for their stories? "I'm not very good but I'm better than you are! Nananahnahha and you're a dirty rascal!"

[PuffDragon]

12:34 PM on 01/06/2011

After helping the Bush Administration launch a war on false pretenses, Miller has no right to criticize any other "journalist", as if she had claim to the title.

[schatsie]

10:05 PM on 01/05/2011

She belongs in the Huffington post WALL OF SHAME along with Bush, Cheney and Colin Powelll and also Gramm and Rubin....

[Hillbilly49]

04:09 PM on 01/05/2011

Judy Miller should never be called a journalist; she is and has always been a propagandist for the republican party.

[planetmondo]

01:10 PM on 01/05/2011

yhe difference between them is wikkileaks just reports actual facts Judy Miller is a propagandist

[Boopsie2008]

11:42 AM on 01/05/2011

Miller's criticism of Assange, really, boils down to her old-school view of journalism, that you verify rather than simply say "it is being reported that", which is like re-tweeting, except it's "re-bleating" rumors as "news."

However, Assange isn't peddling rumors, he's got the good stuff -- the actual document texts, no less -- from impeccable sources. He simply publishes them, leaving it to others to analyze what they mean and fashion the larger story from them. Were he and his group to slow down and perform that function themselves, they'd be so backed up that most of it would never see the light of day.

So, yes, viewed in that light, I can understand Miller's frustration that Assange isn't putting in the work, but rather grabbing the headlines while leaving the rest of the work to others. But what she misses is that his sources are impeccable, and therefore his material is alredy golden without him even having to lift a finger to analyze it, whereas she still has to work hard to verify, verify, verify and create a story and put it in context, and can trip up just like any other journalist.

It's apples and oranges, and she's criticizing him unfairly.

[Zork4]

07:45 PM on 01/05/2011

Agreed. And she has some nerve to even call herself a journalist after being a shill for Machiavellian freaks.

[erikqj]

08:50 PM on 01/05/2011

A leaked document can be of public interest for one or both of two reasons:
- Because it's significant content is true
- Because it's significant author claimed it's truth

For the Wikileaks documents, both are the case. Let's focus on "Cable Gate":
- Some cables are frivolous. That's interesting; why are diplomats being frivolous?
- Some cables contain erroneous information. That's interesting; why are the diplomats dealing in falsehoods?
- Some cables are non-frivolous and true. That's interesting; it brings new, substantial information.

There are several ways a journalist can mishandle such leaks.

Here's how Miller handled them:
- She received leaks containing FALSE information.
- She decided it had news value because it was TRUE
- She failed to verify it, doubly serious since the source had a HUGE motive for lying
- She published anyway
- She didn't present the author of the source material, preventing others from verifying

Here's the lazy "new school" way (If only Miller had such integrity!):
- Receive the leaks
- Publish it with a big "you decide, we haven't a clue"

Here's how Wikileaks handled the cables:
- They received leaks containing TRUE information of the content of the cables
- They decided it had news value because US diplomats had authored them
- They verified this (that the cables were real, and indeed authored by US diplomats)
- They published
- They presented the authors of the source materials, enabling others to verify

The fact is, Wikileaks is much closer

[erikqj]

11:15 PM on 01/05/2011

Wow! That's annoying! After cutting several sentences in order to fit inside the 250 word limit, some bug still cuts the last words off my final sentence. Here's how it should read:

"The fact is, Wikileaks is much closer to fulfilling the requirements of old school journalism than Miller ever was."

[logicanada]

10:10 AM on 01/05/2011

Pea brain and big hair is all the rage on the right.

[1dogs2]

09:53 AM on 01/05/2011

Unfortunately, Miller's attempt to justify her journalistic sins is full of lies. I recall one of her columns "reporting" that Iraq had nuclear weapons. That column was later revealed to have been based on information from "Curveball," an Iraqi source supplied by Chalabi that US national security regarded as a lying psychopath, which Miller either knew or would have known had she made any attempt to check her source. There was no hint in her article that her source was anything other than reliable; indeed, the contrary was the case.

Her later attempt to set herself up as a martyr to freedom of the press by going to jail for refusing to reveal what her source, Scooter Libby, gave her permission to reveal is emblematic of her failure to understand what that freedom actually encompasses and why. At that point, it was clear what a shoddy journalist she is. What was shocking was the number of other journalists, some quite reputable, who were similarly unable to analyze the issue correctly and denounce her silly stunt.