“Greg Mitchell, who edits Editor & Publisher, writes, ‘Miller did far more damage to her newspaper than did Jayson Blair, and that’s not even counting her WMD reporting, which hurt and embarrassed the paper in other ways.’ Jay Rosen concurs. ‘There’s no question,’ he says, ‘this is bigger than Jayson Blair.'” Salon‘s Farhad Manjoo deconstructs the NY Times coverage of Judy Miller’s involvement in Plamegate (available here), and explains why Cheney chief Lewis Libby, in particular, may now be facing an obstruction of justice charge. If it’s any consolation, Scooter, Rove’s in hot water, too.
Tag: NYT
Judging Judy.
“It’s not necessarily clear that a press engaged in a tabloid-esque race to the bottom, consumed by sensationalist pseudo-stories, nuggets of McNews and flag-waving rhetoric, is a free press in any meaningful sense of the term,” writes Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir in a thoughtful piece on the Judith Miller case. But, he concludes, “[c]ompelling a reporter to reveal his or her sources to the police turns that reporter into a police agent, and that’s not acceptable, even in unsavory circumstances like these.” Update: Salon readers poke some substantial holes in O’Hehir’s argument. Update 2: O’Hehir responds.
As a counterpoint, Slate‘s Jacob Weisberg argues the following: “To Miller and the Times, confidentiality is the trump value of journalism, one that outweighs all other considerations, including obedience to the law, the public interest, and perhaps even loyalty to country. This is indeed a strong principle, but it is a misguided one. In the Mafia, keeping confidences is the supreme value. In journalism, the highest value is the discovery and publication of the truth.“
And one more view by way of James Fallows, who’s written quite a bit on journalistic ethics in his time: “So Time Inc’s Norman Pearlstein says he will turn over Matthew Cooper’s notes, because Time magazine is ‘not above the law.’…Matt Cooper, Judith Miller, and the New York Times have been saying something completely different. They have been saying that there is a conflict between what the law asks and what their professional values allow them to do. Therefore they will take the consequences. They will go to jail….They are not placing themselves above the law. They are saying that certain values matter more to them than doing what the law now (outrageously, in my view) asks them to do. Norman Pearlstein is a smart man. Can he really have missed this point? Or is he acknowledging that another set of values have come to count for more, in large-scale corporate-owned journalism?“
The World on Screen.
Despite harboring one of the more irritating crossword puzzles in recent months (it included characters like %,@,&, and *) and a breathless paean to the wildly overrated Julia Roberts, this week’s special NYT Magazine on film and globalization included a number of interesting reads, including an overview of foreign film trends by A.O. Scott, a disquisition on the problems facing the US industry by Lynn Hirschberg, and an extended interview with Maggie Cheung (late of Hero and In the Mood for Love.)
Start Spreading the News.
“We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted. Time and again, history invited George W. Bush to play a heroic role, and time and again he chose the wrong course. We believe that with John Kerry as president, the nation will do better.” The New York Times endorses John Kerry for President. Not much of a surprise, sure, but still worth reading.
State of Fear.
In case you missed the State of the Union address last night, this cartoon anticipated the upshot: terror, terror, terror, 9/11, 9/11, fear, fear, fear, steroids, thank you, good night, and God bless the USA. It’s wonder they didn’t pass out little bloody shirts for the Congressional GOP to wave in unison. Well, while this New York Times news analysis of the speech sounds like it was written by the Bush campaign (he “quickly turned” to domestic issues? What is Todd Purdum talking about? Dubya was blathering on about scary, scary terrorists for at least 40 minutes), I gotta think that this speech might’ve played badly to any voters out there concerned about the economy, and this year as always, it’s still the economy, stupid.