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."
It appears that from the quote above, Libby did not say anything interesting enough at the June 23 meeting with Miller, since her interest was not peaked enough to pursue a story until her July 8 meeting with Libby. Which is, of course, after Russert spoke with Libby.
Link to Miller's response to public editor: http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/thepubliceditor/publiceditorswebjournal/index.html?oref=login
Also note that the NYTs is spinning the news again [did they ever stop?]
Luuuv it when the bad guys try to eat each other.
What's the problem? She's pretty much describing SOP for the MSM, as far as I can tell.
Instead of doing that, they should just throw her out of a window.
/via Powerline
"Who has been the better journalist - Judith Miller or those attacking her in her own paper's pages? Ms. Miller was sounding the alarm about the Iraqi threat and working her sources and fighting not to get beat. Ms. Dowd was parroting unsubstantiated smears, and Mr. Wilson was falsely downplaying Iraq's effort to obtain weapons of mass destruction, without disclosing to Times readers his wife's institutional interests."
http://www.nysun.com/article/21916
Thanks for the Sun link. It shows that at the NYTimes, the loonies are in charge of that asylum.
I actually believe Miller on this one. Abramson has zero credibility since her shoddy, biased reporting on the Clarence Thomas - Anita Hill matter.
Well, that is very revealing.
Today's Dem Talking Points:
I just listened to a bit of Jerry Sproinger. He says that Rove and Libby were involved in forging those "fake" WMD documents. He says that that is why the White House is so terrified by this investigation. He's going bonkers over it!
The inevitable overreach. Chrissie Mathews has been implying this sort of thing while wetting his pants in excitement.
Judy Miller fights back against her own newspaper's effort to defenestrate her.... why, those pigs.
"He says that Rove and Libby were involved in forging those "fake" WMD documents."
Those Niger forgeries were so obviously fake that they were not created by anyone with a desire to support the WMD claim, they were created by someone who wanted to undermine that claim. It is also interesting that the CIA had the docs in their posession, but did not push the WH on the fake claim. No matter who, if anyone, is indicted, this will all come out eventually. And the CIA is not looking too good.
So..does Jill Abramson need to hire lawyers?
Bejeezus! Is this a defenestration or an autophagy?
Ahh, of my favorite words. Such as in "I am so broke I don't have a pot to pee in or the means to defenestrate".
That says a lot about both the reporters and the Pulitzer Committee, doesn't it?
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