PressEthic

That's from an Op-Ed piece by Arianna Huffington in the Los Angeles Times. And it may be putting it too strongly, but maybe not. It's a good question either way, and besides, I respect a good Times bashing when I see one.

Was there more (or rather, less) to Miller's jail time than a heroic, selfless and painfully noble defense of a journalistic credo and the First Amendment?

Huffington thinks so:

Before her transformation into a journalistic Joan of Arc, Miller was in a tailspin, her work discredited, removed from the WMD beat and forced to deal with colleagues who refused to share a byline with her. She desperately needed to change the subject and cleanse herself of the stench left by her misleading coverage leading up to the war — coverage that makes the Jayson Blair scandal, by comparison, seem ludicrously insignificant. And there are few more effective acts of purification for a reporter than going to jail to (in PR theory) protect the 1st Amendment.

Which means here that we should back up and remember Judith Miller before she went to jail - when she was being earmarked for the slammer, I had more than one 'that name is familiar' moments.

It would ring a bell to anyone who read the whiz-bang articles of imminent Iraqi doom that the Times ran during the lead-up to war - articles based largely on what sprayed unimpeded from the mouths of "administration officials" and a certain Ahmed Chalabi.

Articles where in retrospect the phrase "sales pitch" skits nervously through the mind.

Articles by, among others, Judith Miller.

That Judith Miller. The one, Huffington points out, who wrote four of the six articles the Times listed in a 2004 correction/apology on its pre-war coverage.

Ouch.

She takes a heck of a beating in the LAT Op-Ed piece, but there are other articles that address and question the forces and conditions that enabled her deeply flawed pre-war coverage to get to A1 of the Times - questions that are ultimately more important than whether her hard time was a PR stunt.

Franklin Foer writes:

Miller is a star, a diva. She wrote big stories, won big prizes. But now, who she is, and why she prospered, makes for a revealing cautionary tale about the culture of American journalism.

It would seem. So why isn't that cautionary tale being told?

Why am I hearing about Judith Miller only when she's supposedly taking one for the journalistic team?

Why, when, as Huffington rightly suggests, her lack of professionalism can make Jayson Blair's look silly?

You could argue that her incompetence is far more deadly to the profession than his misguided...competence? You know what I mean.

Maybe Miller's jail time wasn't all that necessary. Somethings up when Scooter Libby's lawyer says they gave her a waiver a year ago (even if he is Scooter Libby's lawyer.)

It's an interesting theory, but still...

Why haven't we heard her name as much as that of Jayson Blair and the other frauds? Because she's not a 'fraud'?

That makes it all the more important.

And all the more astounding that someone who so spectacularly failed the profession is now held up as a martyr for its ideals.

And why was she on the Wilson/Plame story anyway?

Now it's getting good...