More on Judith Miller's saga, the responses to her account and the Times' takeout:
- Jay Rosen has updated and added to his great mega-post, adding in reactions and analysis from all over -- and even broken some news. Do a Ctrl-F search for "Mathis" -- in short, Rosen e-mailed NYT spokesperson Catherine Mathis, asking her to reconcile the WaPo story saying Miller was cooperating with reporters with the Times graf saying that Miller would not discuss events with her editors or show her notes to fellow reporters. Mathis essentially stands by her statement to the Post that Miller was cooperative. All evidence, including the Times' reporting, to the contrary;
- As a matter of fact, Judy was cooperating so much that her delays made the story miss the Times' bulldog edition;
- FishbowlDC: "Judy doesn't think anything's her fault. Her faulty reporting on WMD in Iraq was the fault of her sources. Her trip to jail was Libby's fault. And her lackluster reception upon leaving jail was her editors' fault."
- Mickey Kaus, writing in Slate, argues that Miller's actions actually hurt the cause of reporters protecting secret sources: "[Miller's jailing] worked for the prosecutor exactly as intended. After a couple of months of sleeping on 'two thin mats on a concrete slab,' Miller decided, in her words, 'I owed it to myself' to check and see if just maybe Libby really meant to release her from her promise of confidentiality. And sure enough-- you know what?--it turns out he did! The message sent to every prosecutor in the country is 'Don't believe journalists who say they will never testify. A bit of hard time and they just might find a reason to change their minds. Judy Miller did.' This is the victory for the press the Times has achieved. More journalists will now go to jail, quite possibly, than if Miller had just cut a deal right away, before taking her stand on 'principle.'";
Kevin Drum makes an excellent case for why Miller is lying when she says she can't remember her source's name;
All this seems to ignore a big question: Who was Bob Novak's original source? From Time: "Fitzgerald, says a lawyer who's involved in the case, 'knows who it is—and it's not someone at the White House.'" But that would seem to contradict Novak's original column from July 2003, which points to "two senior Administration officials."




Comments