Judith Miller and the Media’s War Cheerleading

By Colman McCarthy

On top of declining circulation, on top of its sinking stock prices, on top of rising costs of newsprint, on top of the Jayson Blair fabrication mess, on top of Blair’s editor being bounced and on top of newsroom discontent, now The New York Times has the embarrassment of Judith Miller.

She’s the reporter in the CIA leak case who did an 85 day jail stretch rather than reveal a source. For doing so, the Times spun editorials all but canonizing Miller as a saint of the free press and a martyr for the noble cause of source confidentiality.

It turns out there is a bit more to this Miller’s Tale than first appeared. Her jail time was a display of theatrics, not principle. The source she was protecting—I. Lewis Libby, a White House functionary and advisor to Vice-president Dick Cheney—had released Miller from her obligation to stay mum well before she chose jail. The message came from Libby’s lawyer but that wasn’t enough for Miller: she wanted a personal letter from Libby releasing her from the pledge of confidentiality. One finally came, so chatty and chummy that it suggested that Libby and Miller had more than a professional relationship. Miller paroled herself and left the jail.

Via a 5,800 word analysis in mid-0ctober of Miller’s hijinx, the Times sought to win back the public’s confidence that it can report the news straight. A worthy effort, except the confidence was squandered long ago when the paper repeatedly printed Miller’s stories promoting the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Instead of being tight with a pro-war source in the White House, Miller’s buddy this time was Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi ventriloquist delighted to have the Times on his knee as a dummy to mouth his calls to war.

The Bush White House and Pentagon shared in the delight. They saw Miller as a secretarial service, on call to take dictation on the WMD scare talk, the phony threat from Saddam and the rational to knock him off pronto. Miller wasn’t alone in being suckered. Much of the major media rallied to the call to invade Iraq, from pro-war editorials in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal to reporters like Miller, Ted Koppel and Geraldo Rivera hot to dress up like soldiers and imbed themselves with their warrior pals who would cakewalk to victory in Iraq.

No towel is large enough for the major media to wipe the blood off their hands for a complicity in military violence that has delivered—not counting tens of thousands of corpses—instability in Iraq and insecurity in the U.S. Judith Miller is only one of many in the press who whooped the war. She is only one of many in print and broadcast who get too close to power, to be seduced by the headiness of being pals with big shots. They become collaborators, not reporters. Plus the perks of hanging out at the Gridiron and National Press Club galas.

It’s as if the examples of the media giants—fiercely independent spirits like I.F. Stone, George Seldes, Morton Mintz and Seymour Hersh, to mention a few—mean nothing.

Small wonder the gang of four--Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz—could con Congress into funding the invasion of Iraq: in addition to having God on our side, look who else is with us. The New York Times and Washington Post.