I've been writing to the nyt complaining about judith miller for over a year.
today i received a response.
Dear n69n,
I include below, Bill Keller's response to allegations against Judith Miller's reporting on weapons of mass destruction to which you refer as written to Daniel Okrent in light of other readers' submitted concerns:
" I followed the WMD controversy at a bit of a distance before I moved into this job. When I learned I'd become executive editor I went back and re-read the coverage -- and the criticism, which had acquired the power of passionate conventional wisdom. (A fair amount of the mail on this subject seemed to me to come from people who had not actually read the coverage, but had heard about it on the cyber-grapevine.) My survey of the material left me with two conclusions.
First, I did not see a prima facie case for recanting or repudiating the stories. The brief against the coverage was that it was insufficiently skeptical, but that is an easier claim to make in hindsight than in context. (By context I mean such things as, what others were writing at the time, what role editors played in handling and presenting the stories, how credible the sources were, etc.)
Second, lacking prima facie evidence, opening a docket and litigating the claims against the coverage was likely to consume more of my attention than I was willing to invest. I decided that, in the absence of more persuasive complaints than I have seen so far, I would base my assessment of Judy's work on what she did on my watch.
My experience of Judy, most extensively when I was managing editor, is that she is a smart, well-sourced, industrious and fearless reporter with a keen instinct for news, and an appetite for dauntingly hard subjects -- advanced weapons, terrorism, Middle East politics, etc. Her early coverage of Osama bin Laden was uniquely foresighted before 9/11, and was at least partly responsible for one of our Pulitzers. Like many aggressive reporters, particularly reporters who deal with contentious subjects, she has sometimes stepped on toes, but that is hardly grounds for rebuke. That was my assessment of Judy when I worked with her before, and nothing she has published in the paper since I became executive editor has caused me to think less of her."
Thanks for writing,
Arthur Bovino
Office of the Public Editor
The New York Times
a refresher on judith miller.
love to hear your comments.