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July 26, 2003 FLOODING THE ZONE....Matt Yglesias thinks it's odd that the usual crew of New York Times bashers are oddly uninterested in the fact that during the runup to war Judith Miller hyped WMD stories endlessly and has turned out to be completely wrong. Why, one might even conclude that Miller was flooding the zone with this stuff simply as a personal vendetta, rather than doing her job as an objective reporter. Matt is too gentlemanly to name names, but presumably he's talking about blogosphere stars Glenn, Andrew, and Mickey, who have indeed pretty much ignored Miller's obsessive reporting. Shouldn't they be calling for her resignation? Posted by Kevin Drum at July 26, 2003 03:30 PM | TrackBackComments
Kevin Kevin Kevin. We all know that conservatives have a CLEAR and PERFECT view. They do not allow facts to cloud their moral imperative. Posted by: M. L. Foster at July 26, 2003 03:36 PM | PERMALINKThis lack of consistency is why Republicans have no credibility. Posted by: Mike at July 26, 2003 03:45 PM | PERMALINKAlterman caught it: It's all about working the refs. If the refs are already on your side, why harass them? Boy the way Glen Miller played And you knew who you were then, Didn’t need no welfare state. It has been fairly obvious for some time that the NYT made an unholy fuss about the wrong liar. Jayson Blair was a flyspeck. Judy Miller is a 100 ton gorilla. And Jeff Gerth is another one. Yet their jobs are safe and sound. Posted by: David Ehrenstein at July 26, 2003 03:56 PM | PERMALINKI'm missing the point here. She was wrong. So are a lot of people a lot of the time. That's not a big deal. If what you are saying is her being incorrect (jury still out BTW) is the same as an editor pushing an editorial position on the journalism pages and denying doing so, that dog won't hunt. Speaking for myself, I don't expect anything close to perfection from anybody, especially journalists. That's why reading/watching/listening to multiple news sources is critical. The NYT had, and has, and I hope will always have, a very rich, very partisan editorial page. God bless'em for it. If the NYT wishes to, as it has had, and has today, partisan news (as opposed to editorial)pages, I'm fine with that too. But having partisan news pages AND declaring objectivity is a problem IMHO. BTW, I think I have seen some difference since Raines left. Posted by: spc67 at July 26, 2003 03:58 PM | PERMALINKspc67, it has been amply demonstrated that she's been nothing more than the NYT mouthpiece for Chalabi. That's not reporting, that's a PR outfit. Posted by: Melanie at July 26, 2003 04:06 PM | PERMALINKAnd that would make her different from CNN and the BBC and Saddam's regime? Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw at July 26, 2003 04:10 PM | PERMALINKspc67... Jack Shafer's piece in Slate --that's what got Yglesias talking -- is long, detailed, and pretty devastating. Check it out. Posted by: Harley at July 26, 2003 04:14 PM | PERMALINKCurious that Fox News slipped Sebastian's mind in his little list. These oversights happen. She wrote a book about Saddam's WMD. She had to find WMD to confirm her book and confirm all the shaky reporting she had done. See how one lie is piled onto the first one? It's like somebody lying on their resume and the story gets bigger and bigger as the years go on. It starts out as a little lie. Just guessing, but these could be reasons a reporter could lean one way or the other. Again, if she, or Bush, were considering the facts objectively, the evidence would have pointed first and foremost to an effort to fake these stories and get the US into a war with Iraq. Posted by: Eric M at July 26, 2003 04:26 PM | PERMALINKJack Shafer's piece in Slate --that's what got Yglesias talking -- is long, detailed, and pretty devastating. Check it out. Thanks, going and doing. Posted by: spc67 at July 26, 2003 04:30 PM | PERMALINKAUTHOR: WillieStyle And that would make her different from CNN and the BBC and Saddam's regime? Yes. [Preview is your friend] Posted by: WillieStyle at July 26, 2003 04:32 PM | PERMALINKJack Shafer's piece in Slate --that's what got Yglesias talking -- is long, detailed, and pretty devastating. Check it out. Ok, I read the piece. It is pretty compelling. If people want to call for her resignation after the remedial suggested steps are taken, then I have no problem with that. If a reporter can't tell whether their contacts are reliable, then that lack of judgement bespeaks a competency issue. But the Raines issue was one of intent (at least in my mind), not competence. Raines' shaping of the news was not because he was making mistakes, but exactly the opposite, he was successfully pushing an agenda. One can support the firing of Raines without calling for Miller's resignation and be consistent. But for me, that Slate article says either she's proven right in the end, or she's not a good enough reporter to work for the NYT. Posted by: spc67 at July 26, 2003 04:46 PM | PERMALINKspc67, To me, Miller's real sin was to single-source her data acquisition over and over and over from a source that a priori would be suspect to a 12-year-old writing for the school newspaper. And that's not to insult 12-year-old reporters. Keep up the good work, guys, just don't emulate Judith! Posted by: dasboat at July 26, 2003 04:56 PM | PERMALINKWhat's wrong with you people? Haven't you ever heard of enterprise reporting? I mean, how many reporters would have the chutzpah to comandeer their own Army unit in pursuit of the story? I mean, even Ernie Pyle never comandeered an Army unit. What's wrong with talking to Chalabi? While all those other reporters were wasting their time talking to grunts about how much they missed their girlfriends, she went to the horse's mouth. You can call it uncritical sucking up to someone who's motives may be questionable, but I call that getting the exclusive, treading where others fear to go. And Shafer? He's one to talk. He never left Seattle, or wherever the hell he's based. It's easy to sit and drink lattes and pass judgment on someone who can't defend herself because, like the Mathew Modine character in that Kubrick flick, she decided to "get in the shit." Go ahead and criticize. Go ahead and think of her as an unprincipled partisan hack who's violated every modern jounalistic principle. It doesn't matter, because Judy doesn't have time for such idle chatter. She's a truthseeker, and truthseekers don't look for the truth behind a desk. Posted by: Sven at July 26, 2003 04:57 PM | PERMALINKGreat post, Kevin. Melanie has it: she was just Ahmed Chalabi’s press agent. Remember the scene with the anonymous Chalabi-supplied "scientist" pointing at various WMD sites in the sand? Even without the assistance of Glenn, Andrew (a/k/a Laura B.’s #1 rival), and Mickey, I think her days be numbered. Posted by: Andrew Lazarus at July 26, 2003 04:59 PM | PERMALINKOh I think it was Laurie Mylorie who wrote the book about Saddam's WMD. Posted by: Eric M at July 26, 2003 05:38 PM | PERMALINKI wonder why Judith Miller hyped WMD stories endlessly and has turned out to be completely wrong. I see from the body and soul weblog that million George Soros along with MoveOn.com is running full page newspaper ads. George Soros has been reading Billmon. He will be running full page ads in the New York Times the St. Louis Dispatch, and the Houston Chronicle tomorrow with a list of a dozen Bush administration lies about the war. You can download a copy of the ad -- headlined WHEN THE NATION GOES TO WAR, THE PEOPLE DESERVE THE TRUTH We keep pushing for that investigation and I don't thnk Bush or Cheney will be in the running come 2004. Posted by: Cheryl at July 26, 2003 05:39 PM | PERMALINKer sorry that should be I wonder why Judith Miller hyped WMD stories that have turned out to be completely wrong. And I also wonder why the Republicans thinks that no one is noticing when they insert the work WMD "programs" into what we expect to find in Iraq. David Brook's did this last night in PBS Newshour and Mark Shields didn't say a single word about it? Posted by: Cheryl at July 26, 2003 05:43 PM | PERMALINKCheryl, And now we get Brooks on the NYT op-ed page twice a week....so they won't have to worry about being accused of liberal bias. Geesh. Posted by: harley at July 26, 2003 05:56 PM | PERMALINKHere's a helping hand: Mickey Kaus (one of five) - http://slate.msn.com/id/2084815/ Glenn Reynolds - http://www.instapundit.com/archives/010286.php Andrew Sullivan - not searchable (sorry) So maybe the criticism is unjustified? Just askin' bob Posted by: bob at July 26, 2003 06:49 PM | PERMALINKOne can support the firing of Raines without calling for Miller's resignation and be consistent One can also do a neck bridge and balance a wine glass full of battery acid on his belly, but that doesn't mean he has thought through his position. shaping of the news was not because he was making mistakes, but exactly the opposite, he was successfully pushing an agenda Do you guys ever listen to yourself, supporters of a president whose White House confesses to watching only Fox? Posted by: Demetrios at July 26, 2003 07:01 PM | PERMALINKDemetrios, As God is my witness, I haven't the foggiest idea what you are, or are not, or may be, trying to say. Posted by: spc67 at July 26, 2003 07:06 PM | PERMALINKBob, You'll notice that Kevin wrote that the trinity has "pretty much ignored Miller's obsessive reporting," not that they totally ignored it. Besides, you found only two examples and neither of them indicates any concern over Miller's reporting (the Kaus example you cite criticized Howard Kurtz, not Miller), so, yes, the criticism of them is still justified. Kaus and Sully have conducted a holy war against the NY Times for a loooong time, so their silence on Miller is telling. Posted by: Jim E. at July 26, 2003 07:31 PM | PERMALINKBob, the Instapundit story was about the appropriateness of herbehavior. He didn’t get around to mentioning that her stories are mostly B.S. Posted by: Andrew Lazarus at July 26, 2003 08:49 PM | PERMALINKGlenn also managed to somehow completely miss making any judgment whatsoever or (using his favorite trick) linking to a bunch of articles that stridently denounce her while saying "Indeed". All of a sudden he's Mr. "Just Presenting the Facts" when it's inconvenient. Posted by: jesse at July 26, 2003 11:23 PM | PERMALINKAnyone hungry for more Miller-bashing, by the way, should start here. Shafer missed my favorite part of Miller's latest article -- quoting a military officer as calling her faux scientist a "turning point" for the WMD search team she was with. What Miller leaves out is that the team's search effort was cut short (and the team told to leave Iraq) just days after she wrote her April story. (Note: The post cited above is the same one Atrios linked to a week ago, so if you read it then, you won't find anything new.) Posted by: Swopa at July 27, 2003 12:43 AM | PERMALINK"Andrew Sullivan - not searchable (sorry)" LOL! Posted by: David Ehrenstein at July 27, 2003 07:09 AM | PERMALINK"I'm missing the point here"...."I haven't the foggiest idea". I'm starting to see a pattern here. Some people really are taking a chance when they play dumb. Sven too. Posted by: zizka at July 27, 2003 07:21 AM | PERMALINKAs God is my witness, I haven't the foggiest idea what you are, or are not, or may be, trying to say. he was successfully pushing an agenda White House confesses to watching only Fox Try to put it together. I've put the key words in bold for you. God is infinitely patient and can wait for you to connect the dots. She can also wait for conservatives to include right-wing propaganda channels in their decidedly un-ecumenical method for media criticism; don't worry, She's got all day. Posted by: Demetrios at July 27, 2003 08:03 AM | PERMALINKOK, I had given you the benefit of ther doubt earlier and decided you couldn't really be trying to make such a ridiculous analogy. Alas, you've proven me wrong. Posted by: spc67 at July 27, 2003 08:47 AM | PERMALINKspc67, this is how you defined the issue yourself: But the Raines issue was one of intent (at least in my mind), not competence. Sorry, I was just trying to apply your own stated standard to a separate situation to see how "consistent" you were. An "intent" to have an "agenda" seems like a pretty serious thing; don't you think, if we're going to ferret out "intents" to have "agendas" at the NYT, we should ferret equally and consistently? No? You're not really a media critic, just an idealogue? Anyway, I notice that you don't actually provide a critique of what I'm saying. But thanks for giving me "the benefit of the doubt". Posted by: Demetrios at July 27, 2003 09:20 AM | PERMALINKThe correct analogy would be if you could find "intent" in Miller's work. Nobody has done that. The ridiculousness of an analogy between politics and journalism remains. The objectives, practices, goals etc. of the two fields are not related. I am happy to draw analogies within given fields of endeavor and frequently do so. I don't generally try to draw serious analogies between say manufacturing computers and college hockey. I am certainly not a media critic (at least not a professional one), nor am I an ideologue (though I do have strongly held beliefs, you'd struggle to categorize the mish-mash). But I can recognize less than compelling thinking. Posted by: spc67 at July 27, 2003 09:30 AM | PERMALINKspc67, please read this and let me know if it addresses your concerns about the "'intent' in Miller's work." She told the Army unit she was traveling with what to investigate, and when higher-ups ordered the unit to shut down its efforts, she threatened them. That's not just inept reporting; it's jounalistic megalomania ... in pursuit of an agenda. Posted by: Swopa at July 27, 2003 09:54 AM | PERMALINKThe jury is still out on the subject of WMD. It seems to me that Right-Wing criticism of Judith Miller is pretty much on a par with Lefty criticism of Gephardt's plans for the Supreme Court when he becomes president.Didn't see much discussion of THAT on this forum. Everyone has their own perspective. Judith Miller is just a little less important than Gephardt. And the management of the NY Times seemed to agree pretty much with what the Right was saying. Blair and Raines are gone, Bill Keller is executive editor and David Brooks has been hired. Unless Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds constitute a force too powerful to resist? Posted by: melk at July 27, 2003 10:27 AM | PERMALINKOooh, I was wrong that I was wrong! Judith Miller DID write a book citing Iraq's Bioweapons: "Germs" 1998. It pops up in this story about the late David Kelly. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=427864 "Some have suggested Dr Kelly was an unworldly scientist led on by the reporters, but he was used to dealing with the media... Among them was Judith Miller of the New York Times, the paper's WMD expert and the recipient of an e-mail on the day Dr Kelly died, in which he spoke of "dark actors playing games". In Germ, the 1998 book she co-wrote, she is fulsome in her praise for him as part of the "Gang of Four", the senior inspectors who forced so many admissions about WMD out of the Iraqis in the mid-1990s. More than anyone else, Dr Kelly was instrumental in getting the regime to admit the existence of its biological weapons programme." re spc, she didn't have to lie to be a bad reporter. She could also be dumb, or an ideological fanatic. She could also could have not reported things that contradicted her earlier reporting, what's that, arrogance maybe. Posted by: Eric M at July 27, 2003 10:36 AM | PERMALINKDid anyone see Judith Miller on CNN last week? She's quite an angry character - has that same evil glint that say, James Woolsey has. Definitely seems like the type to hype up anything she can to start wars. My favorite incidient is when Cheney kept citing Miller stories as "proof" of Iraq being a threat to the U.S., stories which were later attributed to Ahmad Chalabi. WaPo ripped her pretty good for that. Posted by: killbill at July 27, 2003 10:48 AM | PERMALINKspc67, please read this and let me know if it addresses your concerns about the "'intent' in Miller's work." I did as you asked (thanks for the link!). It's damning in that she was overzealous and hamhanded in pursuit of a story certainly. But how are you divining "intent" here? Do you see a pro-war agenda? Please show me that. I see a reporter looking for "the big story." That's what the bold sections say to me. I'm NOT excusing her, simply still don't see the clarity of the analogy between her and Raines. Posted by: spc67 at July 27, 2003 11:01 AM | PERMALINKI'll just remind everyone that melk claimed to have just read the Geneva Convention (sic) and then lied about their contents in the thread here on that topic. Check it out. Hey melk, I'll be posting that whenever I see your name. Posted by: John Isbell at July 27, 2003 12:24 PM | PERMALINKThe ridiculousness of an analogy between politics and journalism remains. You're absolutely correct. Comparing the "intent" to have an "agenda" at Fox News vs. the NYT is like making an analogy between politics and journalism. I apologize for burdening you with less than compelling thinking. Posted by: Demetrios at July 27, 2003 12:44 PM | PERMALINKJohn Isbell: Gotta hand it to you. I've been pulling that Geneva Conventions lie for years. Fooled everyone. Until now. You caught me. Obviously have to be careful around a sharp cookie like you. Look. I would never have used that lie had I not stood to gain financially from it. And I have. In a big way. So I guess it was worth it. Maybe not. It's STILL dishonest. But I appreciate your calling me on it. I'll try to be a better person from now on. But, given that I lied about THAT, how do we know that this coming clean is genuine? Maybe I'm just being facetious? Maybe I'm just mocking you? I just don't know anymore. That's the trouble with lying. It's a downward spiral of deceit. You have a good day. Truthfully. Posted by: melk at July 28, 2003 09:25 AM | PERMALINKIf you would be unloved and forgotten, be reasonable. 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