Judy Miller: The Wrong Poster Child for a Federal Shield Law

With the Senate set to vote on a new federal shield law for journalists, Judy Miller, the former Times reporter-cum-shield law advocate, has bubbled back into the news.

Last week, she spoke about the issue at the Foreign Correspondent's Club in Hong Kong, and was the subject of a lengthy Q&A published yesterday online at U.S. News and World Report.

It's a classic example of When Bad Spokespeople Happen to Good Issues.

I fully support a federal shield law for journalists to augment the laws designed to safeguard journalists and their sources already on the books in 49 states. Indeed, I don't think the proposed Congressional legislation goes far enough, especially since it leaves open the question of whether it would cover bloggers and other independent journalists.

But having Judy Miller be the face of such laws is like having Amy Winehouse doing PSAs for the Partnership for a Drug Free America.

Don't forget, Miller didn't go to jail to preserve the integrity of journalism; she went to jail to protect Scooter Libby -- and her complicity in the Bush administration's successful selling of a bogus war, as well as the White House's desperate attempts to keep its misleading of the American people under wraps.

It would make a lot more sense to make Josh Wolf the poster child for the shield law. He's the freelance journalist who spent 226 days in jail for refusing to turn over videotapes of a nonviolent protest. Or Vanessa Leggett, who served 168 days to protect her sources.

But Miller's U.S. News interview does contain a few nuggets worth chewing on -- and a thudding misrepresentation that needs correcting. First, the nuggets:

Miller believes "it would be crazy" for bloggers not to be covered by shield laws: "I think it's pretty clear that the intention of our Founding Fathers was to protect the lonely pamphleteer." I couldn't agree more.

She says that her time in jail has made her "very opposed to mandatory drug laws." Again, I fully agree.

When asked if she has any regrets about her actions while at the Times, Miller replies: "I wouldn't do anything differently." Really, Judy? Nothing? Not the inaccurate reporting? Not the willingness to put forth erroneous stories your neocon pals in the administration then used to manufacture a casus belli for the war? Not the Iraqi scientist in the baseball cap who you called the "silver bullet" of the WMD investigation, but who turned out to be nothing of the sort? Not the trading of your journalistic principles for access? Not the aluminum tubes? Not Curveball? Not Chalabi? Not agreeing to refer to Libby, then Dick Cheney's chief of staff, as "a former Hill staffer"? Nothing? I'll have to side with Times managing editor Jill Abramson who, when asked in 2005 what she regretted about the Times' handling of the Miller matter replied: "The entire thing."

As for the thudding misrepresentation, there was this exchange:

You took a lot of heat for your role in the Valerie Plame affair. If you could name one of each--what criticism do you think was fair and what criticism do you think was unfair?

Well, there was a stream of absolutely factually wrong stories from Arianna Huffington, who never apologized or corrected the record. She was wrong about everything. I didn't go to jail to protect myself because I was the source. I didn't go to jail for a book contract. I fully intended never to write anything until Scooter Libby's legal plight was adjudicated. I felt it was inappropriate to do so. And unethical.

Wrong about everything? Hmm...

Let's take her second specific first. I never suggested that Miller "went to jail for a book contract." I did report what sources inside Simon & Schuster had told me about a rumored deal with Miller -- and satirically suggested that her editor, who'd visited her in jail, might have told her an 85 day prison stay would be better for sales than 45 days. I also did a same-day update of that post, laying out Simon and Schuster president Carolyn Reidy's denial that there was a "signed deal" for a Miller book. And the next day, I wrote about and linked to Team Miller's further denials. So I'm not sure what else Miller would have had me do to "correct the record."

What is for certain is that, as I wrote at the time, Miller had been telling friends that she had a big book deal. And I heard that from people who heard it from the horse's mouth. And there is no question that the transformation of Judy's reputation from journalistic martyr to discredited neocon shill might have had something to do with the fact that there is now no book deal.

As for Miller's statement that she "didn't go to jail to protect herself" because she was her own source -- a speculation being batted around the Times newsroom at the time, and which I wrote about in the very first post I did on Miller -- she's right, that didn't turn out to be the case. But the truth was even more damning.

Miller told US News that she didn't see a lot of the criticism of her actions because "there's no Internet in jail...it's not like you can do your Google search in the morning." So maybe she missed the fact that in more than 40 posts, written over the course of 13 months, I collected and presented all the facts about her complicity in the selling of the war and in Plamegate -- and let those facts speak for themselves. And it was the facts that laid waste to Miller's noble-reporter-going-to-jail-to-protect-journalism image. It's an image that no one -- not even her staunchest defenders - still buys.

Miller also might have missed the fact that the major thrust of my blogging on the Miller story was to keep the spotlight on the Times' handling of her -- and, in the process, point by point and piece by piece, reveal what turned out to be a very dysfunctional journalistic culture -- self-protective and self-denying.

But that's one of the great things about the Internet. It's all still here for Miller to catch up on. And just in case she has any trouble doing her morning Google search, I've provided links to all of my Miller coverage below.

I invite her -- and anyone else who has a few hours to kill -- to give it a read. Then we can discuss who, in fact, was "wrong about everything."

Judy Miller Coverage:

7-13-05:
The Judy File

7-27-05:
Judy Miller: Do We Want To Know Everything or Don't We?

7-28-05:
Judy Miller: How Deep Do Her Connections Run?

8-4-05:
The Judy File: It Depends on What Your Definition of "Thorough and Comprehensive" Is

8-7-05:
The Expanding Judy File

8-15-05:
The Judy File: Miller's UN-likely Visitor

8-17-05:
Defending Judy: The Times Breaks Its Own Guidelines

8-18-05:
Howell Raines Redux

8-22-05:
The New York Times Falls off the Wagon

8-29-05:
The Judy Tsunami: The Groundswell That Never Was

9-20-05:
Plamegate: The John Bolton Connection

9-30-05:
Miller Walks: The Plot Thickens

10-3-05:
Making Faux Martyrdom Pay: Judy Miller Lands a Book Deal

10-4-05:
Judy Miller, Anderson Cooper, and Me: The Truth About Book Deals

10-7-05:
Memo to the Times: Don't Make the Same Mistakes with Judy Miller You Made with Jayson Blair

10-10-05:
Clueless in Phoenix

10-11-05:
Is Judy Miller Cooperating With Fitzgerald But Not the Times?

10-12-05:
Judy Miller Meets the Grand Jury: Take Two

10-15-05;
TimesSelective: Judy-Culpa Raises More Questions Than It Answers... [UPDATED]

10-16-05:
Russert Watch: Let Me Count the Ways

10-17-05:
Judy Miller's Reporting: A Cancer on the New York Times?

10-18-05:
My Three Hours Hiking Among the Clustered Aspens With Judy Miller

10-19-05:
The Times Judy-Culpa: Random Thoughts and Unanswered Questions

10-21-05:
Assumptions Raised by the Latest Keller-Culpa

10-21-05:
Sorry, Judy... Everybody Didn't Get it Wrong on WMD

10-23-05:
When Will Judy Miller Tim Russert Come Clean?

10-25-05:
The Post-Judy Fallout: Where is Sulzberger Now?

10-28-05:
Four More Years -- Courtesy of Judy Miller

10-29-05:
How Far Will Sulzberger Go to Keep Judy Miller Happy?

11-1-05:
Judy Miller: Back in the Bosom of the Times?

11-2-05:
Chris Matthews and the Power of Repetition

11-11-05:
Judy and Pinch Have a Hard Time Keeping Their Stories Straight on the Big House

12-11-05:
Choice Morsels and Unanswered Questions

12-19-05:
Paper in a Bubble: Is the Times Even More Cut Off than George Bush?

3-13-06:
Vanity Fair's Judy Miller Rehab: Blame the Bloggers

4-17-06:
The Times Asks for Answers; We Provide Some of the Questions

4-20-06:
Will Libby's "Fishing Expedition" Hook Judy Miller and the Times?

8-10-06:
From the Dept. of Stonewalling (Judy Miller Division)

8-17-06:
John Bolton and Judy Miller Breakfast at the Waldorf... As His Confirmation Battle Looms

1-30-07:
From the Dep't of Newly Turned Leaves: Judy Miller Swears to Tell the Truth

Comments

[JGP]

Touche' Arianna. You couldn't have said it any better.

[sharonh]

Your outrage is justified, your points well-made and your logic cohescent. i'm on your side!

[noneIn2008]

Amazing you say she protected Scooter Libby. Everyone knew it was Armatig, including the media. No one protected Libby and he was not involved in the "outing". However, this show the point of the poor media coverage before, during and after. Though the press is now 90% fabricated or spinning party lines, we still need to protect the small % of truth from reporters leaking through in the noise.

[Bocababs]

Arianna....

The polls are tight because the Republicans are very good at going negative. We cannot lose another election over how they frame the Democrats. At this point and where we are right now....I say Obama get a VP -- that will fight back, along with you. I will pose the question again. Do we want to win or not? Biden, Hillary are my choices for VP where the race stands right now. Great post today.....

[drolleen]

William Randolph Hearst type journalism has raised its ugly head, and even the NY Times is in it. This is the rest of the media joining Rupert Murdoch - the new Hearst - and only the internet can protect us.

Arianna - you go girl!

[lifeinfullcolor]

I guess that's the problem with all these people coming out with communication degrees, you think they're journalists because they have integrity, but I guess many are just journalists because they couldn't do anything else. How is it that Rove has a spot, what is a journalist these days, what does having a communication degree mean, knowing how to lie?

[garzoid]

Well there was at least one thing Judith Miller could do...

[leftLibertarian]

Judy Miller was part of the BushCo's War Propaganda network and was used to spread the lies that Iraq had WMD.

[The Other Publicus]

We need a shield law, and it doesn't matter who the "poster child" is. The law needs to protect journalists who protect their sources...regardless of how good or bad the journalist is.

Miranda wasn't a very nice man...but we needed to uphold due process. There was nothing wrong with a flawed man being the "poster child."

[YouThinkAndTalk]

The fact that her book deal fell though says it all. No matter how you spin it, the publishers don't want to take a chance on her, because they have concluded that very few people will buy he book, because she has lost all credibility. And these are the people who wouldn't pass any opportunity to make money. They have made the research for me, and Miller is thumbs down.

[SwampeastMike]

Thank you Arianna.

I enjoyed the hour-long refresher of the story line that caused me to give you serious consideration.

You have learned the smell of a core so foul, distinctive and lingering that you're able to detect it under nearly any perfume. Keep sniffing!

[rudiy]

She was not reporting, she was selling propaganda and then trying to protect Scooter and not knowing the real situation, maybe herself from being charged with knowingly outing a CIA operative.

[SEQUOIABISON]

I am glad someone remembers the devastation Judy Miller and her cohorts at the NY Times caused when they published misleading stories that helped give legitimacy to the Bush invasion of a sovereign nation.

This woman should be in jail for violating her first amendment rights and distorting the truth and falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater.

[jackjava]

Miller took the bait and acted like she had an actual "scoop". They played her and she was too blinded by noteriety to do any journalistic fact checking.

She is acting like a typical Republican...assign blame to everybody else because admission of what a fool you are is not in teh playbook.

She met a faster gun and can't admit it.

I feel nothing for this woman. Her reputation and herself got exactly what she desrved

[alkamm]

Perhaps Judith Miller could have stepped forward and told her bosses and the world the first time the administration planted information into her brain and watched her print it uncritically so that the next day they could quote the same information as independent journalism.

When Cheney and others acted as though her NY Times articles were actual news rather than their own fabrications, Miller should have quit them faster than a bad habit, but she kept going back for more.

[JoDeeVa]

Interesting juxtaposition in the cases of Josh Wolfe/ Judith Miller, exposing absolute hypocrisy in how journalist shield laws can be subverted. Wolfe, documenting a G-8 protest, (feds claimed jurisdiction..slightly damaged police car partially funded with federal $$) was subject to federal court orders to turn over his videotapes. His defense was that the trumped-up federal crime was a fishing expedition to target protesters' identities/ actions, as there was no evidence of criminality. Miller, you have the reality of her knowledge regarding the outing of a CIA agent & an investigation into how the Executive Branch may have been involved, targeting specific individuals' criminal acts.

The feds, complicit with elected officials have usurped & put a chill on free speech, with the Patriot Act/ AETA. Here in the Pacific Northwest, "domestic terrorism" has become paranoic euphemism for oppression of protest, especially regarding ELF, ALF & international corporate enterprise, ie WTO, G-8. While Miller's actions could actually be questioned as seditious, with the involvement of government officials..Wolfe's actions were those of a free-lance journalist recording events of a protest. The feds' actions were punitively intended to be a threat in Wolfe's case, a witch hunt condemning protesters as anarchistic "domestic terrorists." Conversely the actions against Miller, condemning the criminal act of outing CIA agent Valerie Plame, were intended to determine the culpability of Bush Administration officials.

I would question WHICH merits being labelled "domestic terrorism?"
WHO should be more entitled to a federal shield law?...

[garzoid]

Great post -

Who are these federal agents really working for?

What honor do they have if they are not protecting and defending liberty - but instead protect the profits of the very wealthy?

Why are they not PROTECTING the protesters?

That's what a REAL American would do.

These feds are thugs. Like the gangs on New York.