Posted on 10/24/2005 7:05:20 AM PDT by frankjr
Judy Miller fights back against her own newspaper's effort to defenestrate her. This is her letter to the Public Editor in response to his finger-wagging at her. It's not behind Timeselect, but it does require registration. Here's the opener, it goes on for a while after that:
"I’m dismayed by your essay today. You accuse me of taking journalistic “shortcuts” without presenting evidence of what you mean and rely on unsubstantiated innuendo about my reporting.
While you posted Bill Keller’s sanitized, post-lawyered version of the ugly, inaccurate memo to the staff he circulated Friday, which accused me of “misleading” an editor and being “entangled” with I. Lewis Libby, you declined to post the answers I sent you to six questions that we touched on during our interview Thursday. Had you done so, readers could have made their own assessment of my conduct in what you headlined as “the Miller mess.”
You chose to believe Jill Abramson when she asserted that I had never asked her to pursue the tip I had gotten about Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger and his wife’s employment at the C.I.A. Now I ask you: Why would I – the supposedly pushiest, most competitive reporter on the planet -- not have pushed to pursue a tantalizing tip like this? Soon after my breakfast meeting with Libby in July, I did so. I remember asking the editor to let me explore whether what my source had said was true, or whether it was a potential smear of a whistleblower. I don’t recall naming the source of the tip. But I specifically remember saying that because Joe Wilson’s op-ed column had appeared in our paper, we had a particular obligation to pursue this. I never identified the editor to the grand jury or publicly, since it involved internal New York Times decision-making. But since you did, yes, the editor was Jill Abramson."
Funny how the Times turns on Miller! This should cause us to think that they do not feel that Miller has given the goods to the prosecutor to nail the coffin on the pre-judged Rove/Libby.
Exactly. I'm amazed at the anti-Bush types (including most of the media) actually believing the idea that the administration would have a hand in creating such forgeries when the exact opposite is plain as day.
I, like the anti-Bushies, am excited to hear Fitzgerald has obtained information on the investigation into the forgeries but for different reasons. There is zero doubt that enemies of this administration created them.
No, defenestration is what happened to Dan Lasater's lawyer when Arkansas bond czar Lasater got convicted with Peyronie Bill's brother Roger for narcotics distribution.
Out the window with you, boy.
My gut says the same thing...
Oh, no....Forgeries....Not again. Put them on the web!! Let the Freepers take a look at these. Or consult with an expert....like Mr. Rather!!
You make a good point regarding the number of journalists and nations that supported the intelligence that led to war. I remember reading much of it...looking for independent corroboration of the White House's interpretation. And there was much to go around. Still...even with what little respect for the Times I have left, it's surprising to see them resorting to personal attacks on one their own and measuring her value on a political yardstick. Maybe they did expect Miller to rescue and lead them back to the welcome arms of the left but they sure act like they have something more at stake.
as an oldtimer, I believe that "defenestration" came from the Yugoslavia as the Stalinists purged the Party from those that wouldn't toe the line.
Petra Hanáková tells us:
This situation culminated in 1419 with the First Defenestration of Prague, in which Hussites threw 7 members of the Czech Town Council out of Prague's New Town Hall window--and to their deaths on the points of Hussite-wielded pikes below. To make the situation more interesting, King Wenceslas IV had an apoplectic fit and died of a heart attack upon learning of the defenestration.
Radio Prague adds:
They began their rebellion in grand Czech style, with the Second Defenestration of Prague in 1618. In this second defenestration, two vice-regents of the Austrian monarch and some governors of the Czech lands were thrown out of a tower window at Prague Castle. They were not killed, however, as they fell onto a pile of garbage (mostly straw) which had accumulated in the castle moat.
Was Abramson the reporterette who said she wished Mrs. Thomas fed him eggs for breakfast every morning?
My take on this is that Libby told Miller that some of the stuff Wilson was saying was false, and that Miller - aware of the Times's role in spreading Wilson's version of events - went to Abramson and asked whether she should pursue Libby's leads and write a story potentially contradicting Wilson, and was told, "No." Is that what Miller is saying here?
I have never seen such idiotic reporting. They pay no attention to the facts and keep repeating false accounts. And they haven't a clue about law. STUPID.
That's the way I read it too.
It was Julianne Malveaux, a radio host and USA Today columnist.
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