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November 5, 2005
Why Oh Why Did the Society of Professional Journalists Give Judith Miller a First Amendment Award?Guest writer, education blogger and ex-reporter Jenny DeMonte interviews outgoing SPJ President Irwin Gratz about it. Gratz: "We did not give Judy Miller an ethics award." JennyD: "I’m disappointed because when I went into journalism, I thought it was noble work."Jay Rosen: The writer JennyD, a regular in PressThink comment threads, is a former reporter and editor now pursuing a PhD in education, and blogging about it. I asked her to find out from Irwin Gratz (a former student of mine at NYU) what’s up with this big splashy award to Judy Miller at the SPJ convention in Las Vegas. I found it staggering myself. Here is JennyD’s report. You can discuss it with her and others in comments. On October 18, the Society of Professional Journalists gave Judith Miller of the New York Times its First Amendment Award. It’s a big deal. Of the 375 people who attended, almost all stood to applaud as she received the award. The first word she said after being handed the plaque was, ”Wow.” (Miller’s remarks can be heard on this Quicktime video.) In his introduction and presentation of the award, SPJ president Irwin Gratz emphasized that Miller was honored for spending 85 days in jail rather than name a confidential source to a grand jury, and that act was clearly in support of a free press. Except in the several weeks leading up the award presentation, the slowly emerging details of Miller’s story didn’t exactly support the case of her sacrifice for the Constitution. She can’t remember how the name of the CIA agent ended up in her notebook, written in the mysterious misspelling “Valerie Flame.” So she can’t say for certain who told it to her. Maybe her lawyer believes that. Does anyone else? This after she admits she completely screwed up in her reports about WMD in Iraq. They were based on confidential sources, the kind of people who tell secrets but don’t have to take responsibility for the telling. People who Miller says are invaluable to reporters, but who might be totally unreliable, as she discovered. It was just a big mistake, she told the gathering at SPJ. “Sometimes these [confidential] sources are wrong or mistaken. They were mistaken on WMD, Republicans and Democrats alike. As a result my reporting was wrong.” But she quickly noted that journalists need to protect their secret sources, regardless of whether the information is right or wrong. To this her colleague Maureen Dowd later said: “But investigative reporting is not stenography.” The source of the information about the CIA agent, Scooter Libby, turns out to be the kind of person with an axe to grind, being in the Vice President’s office, and seeing that Valerie Plame’s husband—Joseph Wilson IV who worked in the State Department—had been saying things that probably irritated people in the Administration. One would think that Miller might have made that intellectual leap, and turned away from this particular confidential source given the chance that he had an agenda. And then, once talking to Libby, she cut him a deal not to name him as an official in the administration. Why? Because he didn’t want it. My recollection, I told him, was that Mr. Libby wanted to modify our prior understanding that I would attribute information from him to a “senior administration official.” When the subject turned to Mr. Wilson, Mr. Libby requested that he be identified only as a “former Hill staffer.” I agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill. Most of this came out in print on October 16, in the pages of the New York Times. Five days later, in a memo that obviously pained him to write, Miller’s editor, Bill Keller, suggested that the paper might have been taken for a ride in defending Miller without actually knowing what she had done. Clearly, that possibility had been floating around the Times and elsewhere (see PressThink’s many posts listed here.) It’s hard to imagine that anyone paying attention to the case was surprised by Keller’s words. Was Miller really running the show at the Times? Jay Rosen said so here, and then on CNN. Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Miller’s boss, said: “This car had her hand on the wheel because she was the one at risk.” And Miller repeated in a discussion at SPJ that she was the one who was in charge of her notes and situation, not the paper, and any publisher should do what Sulzberger did: “I was the one who had to go jail. I was the one taking the risk. It was basically my decision because it was my notes.” Miller said at the SPJ event that she went to jail to protect a free press. By that she meant not just the right of a reporter to write and publish freely, but also the right of people to talk to reporters in confidence, and not be named: “It is the freedom of people to talk to the press without getting in trouble, and it is that right that is in trouble today. None of the best stories I’ve written in my thirty years at the Times could have been done without confidential sources.” Well, if Lewis Libby wanted to attack Wilson’s credibility why didn’t he just write an op-ed piece about Wilson’s many errors, untruths and sly misstatements? Why did he need to go off the record? “Libby did not want the White House to be seen as attacking Mr. Wilson” is Miller’s answer. Miller as expected called for a federal shield law in her SPJ speech, arguing it would protect the confidential sources on whom reporters rely for news. Except that many people, including Miller’s boss Bill Keller agree that a shield law wouldn’t apply in her case, largely because it involves issues of national security (i.e., outing a CIA agent). Given the clamor over Miller’s professional behavior, and the lack of clarification about it, why did SPJ stand firm on its decision to reward her for her professionalism? (They weren’t the first to celebrate her jailing with an honor; earlier in the month, she was invited to present a First Amendment award to Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat at the California First Amendment Coalition meeting.) PressThink asked Irwin Gratz, whose term as president ended the day Miller received the award, to explain the society’s stance. (Gratz is Morning Edition Producer for Maine Public Radio.) He was centrally involved. Here’s his initial response to Jay Rosen. We bring it to you in full: Of course, as President, I sat on the seven-member executive committee that acts as the awards committee for our annual “Freedom of Information” award. Our initial decision was made in mid-July, a time when Judith Miller was in jail. But, even then I and the other members of our committee were fully aware of the totality of the situation: the questions raised (even by the Times) about Miller’s reporting on Iraq and doubts about the legal strategy pursued by the New York Times (it was our own counsel, Bruce Sanford, who argued in January that Miller and Cooper’s lawyers should have been trying to quash the subpoena based on the unlikelihood that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 applied to this instance). Personally, I marveled at the irony that the person or persons Miller was in jail protecting were almost surely officials of the Bush Administration who have been no friend of the press. Fair enough, but we still have questions. Gratz says that SPJ knew Miller’s reporting practices were suspect, and that people were talking about it even back in July when the society made the decision to give her the award. But those problems were less important than what SPJ saw as the greater good: Miller’s time behind bars would highlight the need for a federal shield law for reporters. Although moves toward passage of the law were already underway when Miller went to jail (34 state attorneys general writing a brief to the Supreme Court in June), her defiance gave a narrative and a picture to the quest for the law. It was that public and publicized act of going to jail—-regardless of whether there was any need to do it, or whether the reporter doing it was really an ethical reporter—-that got Miller the award. Kind of “the ends justifies the means” analysis. Others see Miller’s jailing and then her decision to testify and leave jail as something less than a win for the First Amendment. Mickey Kaus says her actions may have undermined the work of journalists and their commitment to a free press. It’s now clear confinement wasn’t pointless. It 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.” SPJ is a fine organization, dedicated to everything it says. The group has a code of ethics for journalists that Gratz characterized this way, in a follow-up email to me: “The SPJ Code is, we believe, the best model in existence today for a general code of ethics. Individual news organizations do craft codes that have more specific provisions that may be based either on their own history or expectations.” He’s right. It is a solid and fairly comprehensive list of principles journalists should follow. Here are some key passages possibly bearing on the case of Judith Miller: (Read the whole thing.) Seek Truth and Report It “Keep promises,” of course, works in Miller’s favor. But did she uphold the other sections? Not according to two local chapters of SPJ— Northern California and Mid-Florida. They have criticized the award to Miller in an open letter written by Peter Y. Sussman, a former president of the Northern California group, and Linda Jue, current vice president. As reported by Editor & Publisher, they said: We hope to set the record straight on behalf of conscientious journalists around the country who support journalists’ First Amendment responsibilities but are deeply troubled by Miller’s earlier unprofessional conduct and SPJ’s failure to fully apply its own Code of Ethics to this case… The message has been sullied by the ethical misdeeds of the messenger… Gratz told E & P that SPJ didn’t put its support for a shield law above its ethics code. Rather, it separated the two: ethics on one hand, courageous actions on the other. “I think all we were doing was not commenting on Judy Miller’s ethics, only her actions that amounted to extraordinary efforts in support of the First Amendment,” he said. Gratz told me: I haven’t done any in-depth analysis of Miller’s work or how it relates to the code, but you identify areas where questions have fairly been raised. Our delegates, meeting at the convention last week, believed they’d heard enough to pass a resolution that reminds all reporters to exercise restraint in the granting of anonymity and be more careful in negotiating the terms of anonymity with a source. Yeah, and you should see that resolution by scrolling down to After Matter, including the parts critical of Judy Miller that were voted down. I asked Gratz the following: Miller more or less admits violating (or at least treading on) several parts of the code. And she also admits misleading and outright disobeying the direction of the editors responsible for maintaining these principles for her newspaper writ large. What does that behavior say about her commitment to SPJ values, as in the society’s famous code of ethics? And what does your decision to give her the First Amendment award say about SPJ’s own commitment to this code? Your question answers itself about Miller’s commitment to follow our code. But we did not give Judy Miller an ethics award and any given journalist’s ethics, however good or bad, doesn’t speak to their commitment to the First Amendment. Okay, so it wasn’t an award for her professional behavior or ethics. It was an award for spending 85 days in jail. But what if she didn’t have to do that? No one else involved in the case did. That aside, wouldn’t a reporter have to be pretty well-regarded, with a high-level of ethical behavior, in order to be considered for any journalism award? I mean how much leeway is there? Gratz: One of the things that strikes me about our Code of Ethics is that it contains very few absolute proscriptions about behavior. It does say “never plagiarize,” but it more often says things like “Avoid misleading re-enactments,” “Be judicious about naming criminal suspects,” “Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes,” “Be wary of sources offering information for money.” And here’s where Gratz and I talked about my perennial question: Why is journalism “special?” Why do journalists need special privileges and opportunities? Why should they get their own shield law? All of these come out of my desire to understand what non-negotiables there are in journalism, which rules and practices the public—-as well as sources and editors—-can rely on and trust. I mean aren’t they supposed to be a “special” case because in real journalism there are absolutes? … I hope, and believe, that the members of my Society do honor the code always. But, as I explain to students, ethics is not the law. The law is usually clear: I may not walk up to you on the street and shoot you dead. But if you’re running for office and refusing to release your tax returns because they would show you listing your mentally retarded sister as a dependent (my wife faced just these facts during her reporting days), the proper course of action is much less clear. I’m not sure I agree with Gratz here. Under his rationale, journalism becomes pretty loosey-goosey, with ethics as a kind of moving target depending on the context of the work. Well, maybe it’s okay to mislead readers about the identity of a confidential source, or maybe it’s fine to report whatever you get from sources, even if they’re all wrong, or only one person says it. Makes the job a lot easier. No wonder Miller’s colleagues are irritated. Here they are, trying to work under ethical codes that prevent running amok, and she’s running amok. Should the Times have gone to the mat for someone who engages in such questionable practices? No, it shouldn’t, according to Richard Stevenson, one of the paper’s White House correspondents. In Keller’s October 21 memo about the Miller affair he says: Dick Stevenson has expressed the larger lesson here in an e-mail that strikes me as just right: “I think there is, or should be, a contract between the paper and its reporters. The contract holds that the paper will go to the mat to back them up institutionally — but only to the degree that the reporter has lived up to his or her end of the bargain, specifically to have conducted him or herself in a way consistent with our legal, ethical and journalistic standards, to have been open and candid with the paper about sources, mistakes, conflicts and the like, and generally to deserve having the reputations of all of us put behind him or her. In that way, everybody knows going into a battle exactly what the situation is, what we’re fighting for, the degree to which the facts might counsel compromise or not, and the degree to which our collective credibility should be put on the line.” I’ve heard similar sentiments from a number of reporters in the aftermath of this case. I was a journalist for fifteen years, and loved it. I was a member of SPJ too. But my love affair with journalism might be ending here, as the folks who make up the membership of one of the most important organizations in the profession decide to look the other way when their hero violates basic principles. I fear they believed that Miller’s chosen imprisonment overshadowed any shoddiness in her work. This is another part of the slow rot that’s eating at the work of newsgathering and reporting and writing and producing. Journalism has, as its core, the trust between reporters and editors, and reporters and the public. As that erodes, the whole enterprise starts to crumble. People turn away from news and reporting. Other forms can rise and steal the hearts and minds of citizens. I am quite disappointed that a professional organization, representing work I love, would have celebrated someone who appears to have stomped all over the highest values of the practice. If Stevenson and Keller are right about the “contract between the paper and its reporters,” where’s the contract between journalists and the public? That’s what the rules and codes are supposed to be. They tell us what journalists do to retain our trust without us having to witness every act of newsgathering. I’m disappointed because when I went into journalism, I thought it was noble work. My colleagues and bosses were dedicated to the highest standards of finding out everything, and then making sure that everyone had access to that information. I thought we had rules that everyone followed, and that editors strictly enforced. I looked at my job with almost the same view as maybe a court judge: the rules of evidence mattered because without them, stories could be slanted, shoddy work passed off as professional, and people could be misled and worse. This is the latest event that reminds those things I believed are not always true in journalism today, and I fear they may never have been. Update: On Tuesday, November 15, the New York Chapter of SPJ sent a letter to the organization’s executive committee expressing its unhappiness with the decision to grant the award to Miller. E&P has the story here, and here’s where you can read the entire letter. Here’s some of what it said: Ms. Miller has yet to adequately explain the contradictions, inconsistencies and missing pieces to her story. Indeed, The Times reporters who contributed to an Oct. 16 investigation into Ms. Miller’s role in the case have described her as uncooperative and evasive – which is her right, considering the likelihood that she will be called to testify in the case against Mr. Libby, if the lying and obstruction charges against him reach trial. We respect her decision to protect herself from legal troubles by limiting the likelihood that her public statements might contradict any testimony she has given or might give in the future. And then in conclusion: In light of the above concerns, we want to be on record that we do not stand with the executive committee of SPJ on this year’s First Amendment Award. The committee clearly saw an opportunity to share in the limelight with Ms. Miller to promote SPJ’s activities and draw attention to its national convention. But to us, this was the wrong cause to attach the Society’s name to. After Matter: Notes, reactions & links… JennyD’s bio: Jenny DeMonte worked for 15 years as a reporter and editor at Esquire and New York Woman magazines, the Hartford Courant and Bergen Record newspapers, and was named editor of New Jersey Monthly in 1993. The following year, she created a biannual ranking of the state’s high schools that became one of the best-selling features published by NJM. She left journalism in 2000 and entered a doctoral program in education at the University of Michigan. She started her weblog as a way to make the work of scholars and academics in education more transparent and available to all. Here is a copy of the resolution on the use of anonymous sources passed by delegates to the 2005 SPJ Convention & National Journalism Conference in Las Vegas, Oct 17-18. Before approving the text, the delegates removed two paragraphs critical of Judith Miller (keep reading for those.) Whereas, the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists calls upon journalists to “be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power acountable” and to “keep promises;” and The following two clauses were proposed and deleted by the delegates before final passage of the resolution: Whereas, coverage by Judity Miller and other journalists of supposed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, using anonymous sources that proved to be wrong, is part of a continuing debate over a major question of public policy; and Meanwhile, my former employer in northern New Jersey, The Record, ran a pretty damning editorial about the Miller affair, entitled “Heroine No More.” Journalism has had a lot of bad press lately. Ms. Miller’s going to jail was supposed to be a shining moment for the First Amendment. Now The Times’ top editor has said he made mistakes in dealing with her. There’s a chance she may be fired. Jeff Jarvis adds more insight to how journalism writ large may suffer from its embrace of Miller’s professionalism. Awards, speeches, adulation…all of that indicates that her behavior as a journalist is not only acceptable, but laudable according to her colleagues. It’s not about who exactly she was protecting, or which political group makes out best here. This is about journalism, about the pact that the profession has made with the public. That’s what’s at risk here. Jarvis gets it right. Like it or not, we in journalism are judged by our worst work and what we do about it. When we circle the wagons to defend fellow journalists instead of defending the truth, we lose trust. I tell editorial organizations trying to improve quality that it’s more important to raise the bar at the low end than the high end because of this…. To those of us outside looking in, it seems that journalists have made promises to sources and maybe to themselves, but there’s been some kind of breakdown in its promise to the public. If so, that’s a big problem, because without the public to read and watch journalism, there is no business to work in. (Speaking of the public, here’s the latest report on dropping newspaper circulation numbers. Maybe more trust would reverse the trend? Couldn’t hurt.) SPJ takes some more heat in Romenesko’s letters— the news industry’s bulletin board. Holden Lewis writes about a recent email from the new president of SPJ that he has problems with. His last lines are rather pointed. I used to feel proud about my SPJ public service medal. Now it has been debased. I’ll have to check the medallion when I go home. It was bronze. Now it’s probably been transmuted into lead. The WSJ, in a story about the road to Scooter Libby’s trial, says that reporters Judith Miller, Matthew Cooper, and Tim Russert could all be questioned. The reporters are expected to face a barrage of questions from defense lawyers. Instead of protecting sources, they could end up defending their own credibility, reputations and reporting techniques…. The New York Observer reports on Miller’s continuing negotiations with the Times over her potential return to the paper, and whether she can write a rebuttal on the paper’s Op-Ed pages. It seems that the Times’ bosses think maybe the best thing to do with a difficult reporter is make her an editor. Jay Rosen continues to press the Times to explain exactly what Judith Miller was up to in Iraq and afterward. Specifically, he’s waiting for Times executives to clarify competing explanations from Miller about security clearances she had while covering the war. Did she have a DoD clearance that prevented her from fully reporting what she knew? Jay’s letter to Romenesko emphasizes that that the confusion remains, and no one knows for sure what kind of clearance Judy Miller had. Latest Miller severance update from the New York Observer: As of November 8, the Times and Miller are close to reaching agreement over her separation from the paper. She won’t be an editor…or a reporter, according to the story. She still wants to write an op-ed, but there’s nothing definitive about that in her either. But some Times’ staffers say publish her argument. Meanwhile, Times bosses are surprised by her tenaciousness over the negotiations and her demands. With Ms. Miller so insistent on getting a chance to publish her argument, some at the paper are wondering what the Times brass stood to gain by not going along. “It’s hard for me to argue against letting her have her say, to rebut the charges against her,” one Times staffer said. “Aren’t we in the business of letting it all hang out?” Going, going, gone. Judith Miller has officially “retired” from the New York Times. Here’s the link to the Romenesko item. Bill Keller’s memo to the staff includes a little clarification over the his use of the word “entanglement” in a previous memo about Miller that he sent to the staff on October 21. Her concern of that word was in today’s New York Observer story too. First, you are upset with me that I used the words “entanglement” and “engagement” in reference to your relationship with Scooter Libby. Those words were not intended to suggest an improper relationship. I was referring only to the series of interviews through which you — and the paper — became caught up in an epic legal controversy. Tomorrow’s Times will carry a letter from Miller about her reasons for her departure. The paper’s story announcing her retirement is here. Judith Miller published her own letter on her own website, judithmiller.org. The letter itself is unrepentant, and appears to confuse the reason that her newsroom colleagues were upset by her actions and opposed her return. Though some colleagues disagreed with my decision to testify, for me to have stayed in jail after achieving my conditions would have seemed self-aggrandizing martyrdom or worse, a deliberate effort to obstruct the prosecutor’s inquiry into serious crimes. Weren’t her colleagues upset because of her reportorial practices, rather than her decision to testify? In the October 16 article, Jill Abramson said that Miller had never approached her suggesting an article about Wilson, et. al, while Miller says she did. Elsewhere in the same article, one reporter—Todd Purdum—questioned Miller’s ability to operate outside the rules and bounds set for other reporters. Diana Henriques said: “[S]he and others at the paper took “great pride and comfort” in how The Times stood by Ms. Miller. But she said the episode and speculation surrounding it “left a lot of people feeling confused and anxious” about Ms. Miller’s role in the investigation. And in Bill Keller’s October 21 memo he quotes Dick Stevenson, who suggests that the paper’s support of Miller didn’t match her commitment to conducting herself in way that was consistent with the highest practice of journalism. The other interesting tidbit is that she says she went to jail in part to dramatize the need for a federal shield law, which gives the reader the sense that this might have been more of a grandstanding stunt rather than necessary suffering to protect a promise to a source. Will Judith Miller turn her website in a blog? That would be an interesting twist. [Note: Earlier in the day, Henriques quote from the Times story was inadvertently linked Purdum’s. That has been corrected here.] She said that in the few hours since her departure had been made public, she had received several offers “of all kinds” for future employment, which she declined to specify. But her immediate plans are to take some time off. She said that after her stint in jail, she was “hit with a 40-day tsunami” of criticism and needed a break, though she has scheduled several public appearances, including one last night. So, what orgnization will hire her, and for what position? The most revealing story in this whole saga may be the November 10 Washington Post piece. Reporter Lynne Duke paints a rich picture of Judith Miller, who she says she is, and who others think she is. It’s a fascinating picture in light of all that’s gone on. So here we are last week in a SoHo brasserie called Balthazar, where a parade of Judys appears. Outraged Judy. Saddened Judy. Charming Judy. Wise Judy. Conspiratorial Judy. Judy, the star New York Times reporter turned beleaguered victim of the gossipmongers and some journalists who have made her “sick to death of the regurgitation of lies and easily checkable falsehoods.” That’s why she’s agreed to talk.
Posted by JennyD at November 5, 2005 12:42 PM
Comments
The reasoning of SPJ and Gratz is as twisted and as devious as are Miller's rationales for her own behavior. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at November 4, 2005 2:22 PM | Permalink Strictly speaking, she went to jail because she didn't believe Libby's first waiver. That he meant it the first time was proven by his emphatic second, specific, waiver. I'd prefer to see somebody go to jail--if they have to go to jail--to protect somebody who desperately wants to be protected. In the second case, though, there is no fallback position of being able to say, okay, now I know he really means it. I'll talk. Let me out. She was pretty slick in the case she picked. And, as many have noted, she can be a loose cannon, but she was hired and lauded by the NYT. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at November 4, 2005 2:54 PM | Permalink So, in essence, SPJ is using Judy Miller to make points on a journalistic sheild law - which wouldn't have helped Judy Miller's case. And Judy Miller used the New York Times, the US Army and the good will of newspaper readers to further her career and burnish her ego to ever lusterous glow. SPJ didn't mean it as an ethics award. No shit. Posted by: Dave McLemore at November 4, 2005 3:31 PM | Permalink "Ethics are the esthetics of the future." -- V.I. Lenin Posted by: David Ehrenstein at November 4, 2005 4:03 PM | Permalink Next up for the Times-Democrat (and AP, LAT & CNN) Wen Ho Lee. Lee is a more sympathetic figure than anyone in the Plame business---CIA (Wilson & "Flame") Bushies, Big Media (Time, NYTimes, Russert, etc.) and the ruling in the Federal Court (evenly split) gives hope to big media in an appeal to the Supreme Court. I hope they lose. MSM is not about "afflicting the powerful" anymore, it's about having the power the powerful have. Now that Fitzgerald has criminalized leaking classified information to the press, I hope the Bush Administration pursues all the leaks given to undermine them. Hey, it's what the NYTimes editorial board wanted----bring it on! Here's the Wen Ho Lee info: http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=91667 Posted by: kilgore trout at November 4, 2005 4:05 PM | Permalink For Irwin Gratz's argument to hold water, Judy Miller would have had to stick to her principle by staying in jail and refusing to see any waiver as uncoerced. Instead, faced with the prospect of longer jail time, she completely caved in because, as she put it, she owed it to herself, and had her attorneys reach out to Scooter. With the help of the prosecutor, they twisted his arm enough to secure an "uncoerced" waiver. Read the Kaus excerpt above. It illustrates clearly why her actions only endangered press freedoms and in no way helped them. And anyone who believes her advocacy has moved us any closer to a federal shield law is delusional. Where's the evidence? State AGs don't pass federal legislation. SPJ has made itself into a laughingstock with this indefensible decision. What are their award criteria again? Pay lip service to a principle and spend how many days in jail before betraying it? Is there a set number? If she'd caved after two weeks instead of 85 days would she still have qualified? I think the organization at least owes us an explanation on that score. How many days do you have to spend in jail before selling out to still walk away with an award? Irwin? Anyone? Posted by: Frank Sennett at November 4, 2005 4:10 PM | Permalink Small correction -- Jenny says that Wilson's story was irritating the administration. What she should have said was Wilson's story was total and complete falsehood and slander. That would have been better journalism. Posted by: stan at November 4, 2005 5:09 PM | Permalink But what about the legitimate question that Miller’s work may have tainted her role as a proponent of our First Amendment argument for a reporter’s privilege. I believe the First Amendment requires us ... to be tolerant in the extreme. As a result, mainstream rights often wind up being protected by very un-mainstream people. Think of ... Larry Flynt, who won affirmation of the right to print parody. Would SPJ give an award to Flynt? An award is given to a person, not an event, and so who the person is must play some role in a decision of conferral. Ethics and ethos cannot be separated from deed unless we're also willing to award the Flynts of the world for protecting their own economic interests because doing so also happens to protect First Amendment rights. By Gratz's own reasoning, SPJ should award Flynt. I look forward to that. SPJ is all about its Code of Ethics. And here they've tossed it aside--specifically!--to award an event in the guise of a person who flouts the code. Geez... It’s too bad the SPJ’s standards have declined to include honoring hacks who engage in propaganda. At last year’s SPJ convention, Bill Moyers gave an address entitled Journalism Under Fire, in which he made some interesting and relevant points: “…the greater offense was the seduction of mainstream media into helping the government dupe the public to support a war to disarm a dictator who was already disarmed.” Moyers doesn’t mention Miller by name, but could he have possibly given a better description of her work? What a difference a year makes. The First Amendment committee of The American Society of Journalists and Authors, voted to honor Miller with its annual Conscience in Media award, but that decision was later reversed by the full board. That was an act of conscience. I have to agree with Frank that Miller's claim to be engaged in principled action, where consistency is the whole point, collapsed under the circumstances in which she left jail. As he says, "Judy Miller would have had to stick to her principle by staying in jail" and (I think) outlasting the prosecutor for her action to be successful. I agree, too, with Andrew Cline: it's mind boggling what the SPJ's ethical statement end up being with the Miller award, and bloggling to think that it could think it made no statement whatsoever by giving such a high honor, and a standing ovation, which is an emotional honor, to "a person who flouts the code." What in the world possessed them? On the other hand, if it was a question of paying her defense bills, I would think SPJ might do that in good conscience. Everyone is entitled to a first class defense, even norm flouters. But not to an award. Off topic. This will be quite interesting to some of you. Ann Althouse, Name the rational, intelligent liberal blogs. Her readers, conservatives mostly, do that. Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 5, 2005 12:03 AM | Permalink As an associate member of SPJ, in consideration of whether to continue as a member, I thought I'd weigh the case being built here against Judith Miller (and thus by extension, the SPJ, for giving her an award): A) Inability to reveal the source for "Valerie Flame" Nicholas Lemman has provided a very plausible explanation of (A) in his 4,500-word article in this week's New Yorker: "But, by Miller’s own account, another important reason for her testimony was that Fitzgerald had agreed to ask her only about Libby, and no other source, when she appeared before the grand jury. The agreement left Miller an opening to say that she couldn’t remember who had first mentioned Valerie Plame’s name to her." Verdict: ok by journalism standards, but the Public Journalist (PressThink beat in the pre-blog era) would damn their sources and respect the justice system. Skipping ahead to (C), we can cut her a little slack. She agreed in the hypothetical. She never did write a story, and the phrase "former Hill staffer" does not appear in the NYT archive. My verdict: I don't have a problem with it. As for (B), screwing up and not owning up to it earlier, she and her editors are guilty there. Michael Massing lays out the case in the 7,900-word NYRB article. Miller's reaction is effectively "no contest." Massing's response (same link): "In any case, it's revealing that Miller challenges nothing else in my article, which is filled with examples of what I argued were serious shortcomings in her reporting." Jack Shafer gave Massing his due. The Times, to my best search of their online archives, has not to this day acknowledged the Massing critique. Posted by: Jon Garfunkel at November 5, 2005 12:39 AM | Permalink In preparation for the BlogNashville conference in May, I put together some questions that might stir some additional thoughts on journalism ethics and the Miller situation. I will quote Doc Searls briefly from his blog: Early in my own career I did an investigative report on rural poverty that led me to the same conclusion: that we sometimes employ dishonest or morally compromising means to serve what we believe to be honest and morally justifiable ends. However we put it, rationalization is involved. Such is also often the case with the Gotcha! game. Yeah, we win, but what, besides the exposed butts of those whose pants we pull down? In some cases, big things, sure. In others, not much.I also found this very interesting and wonder if JennyD thought about the connection between the two: In speaking about Miller/Libby: "... [Libby] turns out to be the kind of person with an axe to grind ... One would think that Miller might have made that intellectual leap, and turned away from this particular confidential source given the chance that he had an agenda."Later she notes that, "... [Miller] was invited to present a First Amendment award to Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat at the California First Amendment Coalition meeting." In a comparison of Woodward/Felt to Miller/[and mistakenly as it turns out, Rove], Kurtz wrote: Cooper and others have argued that they can't make a distinction between "good guy" and "bad guy" sources -- a promise is a promise -- but helping White House officials finger a covert operative is not exactly the kind of work that builds public support for the Fourth Estate.Thoughts? Posted by: Sisyphus at November 5, 2005 12:43 PM | Permalink Great article...even though I don't completely agree with it. I still admire Miller's going to jail and...even in this case...still don't think journalists should be compelled to give up their sources (but she's a horrible, horrible cause bearer and deserves to be fired for her stenography - on a side note, drudge reports that she's returning to the times on Monday.). I wouldn't give her an award, though. And...pulling out the speculative hat...it sure seems to me that Floyd Abram's and Patrick Fitzgerald's letters are more to the truth than anything else...that it does seem that Libby didn't really want anyone to talk...so that he can hide behind his cover story: journalists told him about Plame. It's really disturbing to hear about those deleted clauses (and I wonder what the vote results by the delegates were...hope it was close). Finally...I don't think it's fair to criticize someone for only being able to last 85 days in jail. Even if you strenuously disagree on why she went...I don't see how anyone can say her making a bargain affects her principles (when it was the punishment that did it). How long would or could any of us last? Posted by: Ron Brynaert at November 5, 2005 1:55 PM | Permalink I have several big problems with this (as you can see from above!) but I want to add a couple of things. I think so much has changed since Watergate that you can't even compare the two situations. Reporters have become minor celebrities. They go to their annual dinners with movie stars, and then listen to the president make fun of himself. They have famous friends, and go to fancy dinner parties. At least, these are the Washington/NYC/LA journalists. The reporters in Toledo who worked on the story about Vietnam atrocities, and the latest story about missing coins and state funds--those guys probably haven't been invited to any dinner parties with the rich and famous. But the journalism they do is wonderful, and perhaps more ethically sound, and more steeped in good reportorial practice than what's coming out of some reporters at the NY Times. Why? I'm not sure. But the notion of the poorly-paid reporter, doing honest work to afflict the comfortable sort out melts away you read about the lives of the celebrity reporters like Miller. The Observer article here clued me into the idea that she's not your basic, shoe-leather journalist. So, in terms of what Kurtz said and Sisyphus quotes, I think that if reporters can't see the difference between good guy and bad guy sources, it might be because they are way too close to the people in power. They've lost perspective, and their compact is no longer with the reader, but with the source. Ron, I also want to agree that you can't criticize someone for not wanting to stay in jail. But nor should you laud them necessarily for going in the first place. Sure, Miller isn't a great poster child for journalistic ethics and values. So don't give her an award. Don't hold her up as a role model. I'm trying to think of other professions that would give an award to such a visibly shoddy practitioner. Jay doesn't like my medical analogies, but I want to use one here: would the AMA give an award to a doctor who came up with a cool new heart surgery technique, but always left sponges in patients and killed a few, and came close to killing others? How about an architect who drew a beautiful building, although the last few he designed fell down? Or a lawyer who did a lot of pro bono work, but was known for stealing from the escrow accounts of clients? I don't think the ends justifies the means. FYI ... blogspot is down for maintenance. Great piece, Jenny D. I just linked to the posts by you and Ron for a new Blogcritics media piece I did which is available here. Ron, I have to disagree with this: It's not a matter of her only being in for 85 days - it's that when push came to shove and she felt she made her statement she left jail and then turned over exactly the details she could have provided before (assuming she could remember her sources, which turned out to be asking too much.) The message sent is send the reporter to the pokey and eventually you'll get cooperation. This shot holes in her own stand. Posted by: Scott Butki at November 5, 2005 5:36 PM | Permalink Scott, Did you ever think that Judy might have been able to pretend she forgot because the agreement reached - finally - limited her testimony to the Libby talks. Yes. Judy probably could've gotten that deal last year...something similiar to what Pincus got. But though this became Judy's Times...she wasn't entirely alone in wanting to go to jail. The Times wanted that...and they even wanted her to stay longer in hopes the grand jury would be dissolved without her having to testify. That's partly why Keller regrets that they didn't seek an earlier compromise. While she got little more than she would have gotten in the first place...the fact is she did get something...which allows her to claim something...and evidently there are still some journalists that believe that she did the right thing. oh...and thanks for the links at blogcritics... Posted by: Ron Brynaert at November 5, 2005 6:12 PM | Permalink Not sure if I am repeating something someone else intended to convey but my feelings -- as a layman, nonprofessional -- tend toward Judy being a shill for those who would use the media to further their own ends, either in the "Hearstian" "give me the pictures, I'll give you the war" sense or in the overall effort of some governmental entities to diminish the role of the media -- even at the "paper of record" -- as the public's watchdog. If, after 85 layzy dayze in the hoosegow, Judy had decided to write something along the lines of exposing the lies and the misstatements and the various other deceptions, this might have qualified her -- sources intact -- for something pertaining to "1st Amendment" integrity. Using the ability to develop sources to ferret out those who would perpetuate a grand scheme of deception and dishonour to the United States, the 1st Amendment being a big part of the nation and its ideals, Judy might have done a greater service, thereby extricating herself from her predicament and using her influence to stem the flow of misinformation and institutional misconduct. Put off the scent before, she might have wanted to demonstrate that she's got her nose back. Tail wagging eagerness just ain't good enough to catch the crooks whose integrity is on the lam. But, as the aspens all turn colour at the same time simply because their roots are all intertwined and -related, it appears everyone involved was merely trying to cut the best deal they could at the time, given the circumstances. It was not soon after Judy's release from the clink and her gag agreement (not that there was much funny -- outside of her clique -- about the whole situation), not soon after that the indictment came down for ILL. It is therefore better for her to be on the loose to further her masters' unabated ill will than to be secluded and otherwise unable to act on their behalf. The SPJ award may have been an effort to redeem her credibility and put her in a position whereby she was shielded from further antagonistic scrutiny. This seems to not be the case, considering developing her sources includes various people who are outlaws -- in the case of Ahmed -- or indictees, potentially inductees into the Republicans' Hall of Infamy (Iran-Contra, Watergate, Silverado, and on and on). She has not been forgiven her trespasses and those who seek to put he in some born'd agin category are not considering the incidence of recidivism among the incarcerated to perfect their "arts." Only she can redeem herself by writing an expose of those who were "wrong" and of those who led her barefoot down the aspen rooted path on a clear Rocky Mountain Fall might, tripping and freezing in that rarefied air-headedness. But, we might not be able to understand the sense of devotion she has for those who would cause her skinned shins and frost-bitten toesies. She may be a martyr to some other cause and for some other group, other than those who share her journalist craft. Posted by: Alamaine at November 5, 2005 8:05 PM | Permalink "I'm trying to think of other professions that would give an award to such a visibly shoddy practitioner." --Jenny D Posted by: Steve Lovelady at November 5, 2005 9:02 PM | Permalink Mr. Fitzgerald pointed out the one fact that made this argument moot. This is a rare case. He didn't feel that forcing the press to reveal sources should be done. That said, the act that WAS THE CRIME is what this is really all about. When Ms. Millers source talked to her, that was the crime. By her actions, rather than acknowledging the unique situation she was in, she could very well promt a legal situation that will be used to attack the press when they use confidential sources for important, legitimate reasons. Posted by: mjvpi at November 5, 2005 11:27 PM | Permalink If you were on the award board of an organization that only its members had ever heard of, you might be tempted to pick a high-profile person rather than a high-quality person to receive it. After all, the non-members can be counted upon not to know what really happened, or should happen, or what the criteria are. It ought to be recalled that Libby is being indicted for fibbing. Not for outing. Most people know this, but if you think by repetition you can convince people of the opposite, and that Plame was "covert", you ought to get a job at the NYT. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at November 6, 2005 9:28 AM | Permalink Ron, you wrote: But you are omitting the fact that Keller also said that Miller misled him and others. So while they supported her term in jail it was under false pretenses. Posted by: Scott Butki at November 6, 2005 10:06 AM | Permalink Although its understandable that SPJ would want to give a "First Amendment Award" out pursuant to the Miller/NYTimes piece, given Miller's actions she was the wrong recipient. Better to give it to Floyd Abrams, who was the Times attorney who went to bat for the First Amendment, or to Keller who supported Miller's claim to First Amendment protections without question. But not Miller. Ami is right on. Floyd Abrams would have been a more worthy choice. Scott, Keller wished for an earlier compromise not complete capitulation. I'm not sure why you think I left something out about why he changed his mind when that's the reason why he did so. I despise Miller for just about everything that she did but I DO think that it's far more complicated than the left makes it out to be...and that there could be deep ramifications from all of this. There's no such thing as a "rare case"...only precedents...and this could be one that hurts all of us in the long run. Posted by: Ron Brynaert at November 6, 2005 11:04 AM | Permalink I meant "Judy's lies" which are self-evident are the reason why Keller had some regrets. Posted by: Ron Brynaert at November 6, 2005 11:06 AM | Permalink It ought to be recalled that Libby is being indicted for fibbing. Not for outing. Most people know this, but if you think by repetition you can convince people of the opposite, and that Plame was "covert", you ought to get a job at the NYT. Hmmm. "We have noticed that Valerie Plame Wilson has lived in Washington since 1997. Where she was before that is not disclosed by research facilities at my disposal. If I were Valerie, I'd be careful about where I traveled. Very careful. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at November 6, 2005 10:43 PM | Permalink I wonder how they pick these "facts to undo" lists. Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 6, 2005 11:10 PM | Permalink Ron, thanks for the clarification. Jay, how's the book work coming? Posted by: Scott Butki at November 6, 2005 11:32 PM | Permalink Scott: It's turning into a book on trust, and changes in its establishment. Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 7, 2005 12:20 AM | Permalink Steve. Presumably Fitzgerald knew this, or something pretty much like this, when he put his indictment together. Now, if you think by repetition you can convince people he did something different than he really did, you ought to get a job with the NYT.
If a country needs this kind of confusion to figure out that a open CIA employee is an open CIA employee, then their intelligence service is pretty poor, and probably not up to sharing its new-found knowledge with its airport customs and immigration guys. Nevertheless, it's probably useful that the US is such a nice place. Less claustrophobia for those who feel required to stay. During the Cold War, there were a lot of guys--mostly--some women--who were also well-advised to be careful in travel. Low-level military intel guys--when again civilians, and special ops veterans. I used to carry some military stuff in my wallet as a souvenir, but I was careful to take it out when traveling, just in case. And I was just a grunt.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey at November 7, 2005 6:24 AM | Permalink Anyway, my point about the subject matter of the indictment stands. richard, would it really kill you to stay on-topic in one discussion here? ami. She went to jail to protect a guy--Libby--from prosecution for a crime he hadn't committed? Obviously, what she had to tell Fitzgerald post-jail was no more help than he had before in bringing charges of agent-outing. WTF? as some folks say. I don't want to comment on the award, save to observe that awards tell more about the awarder than about the awardee. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at November 7, 2005 10:59 AM | Permalink I dunno, but if Yassir Arafat could win the Nobel Peace Prize, why can't Judy Miller win this SPJ Award thingy? Is the SPJ award really more important (I mean to anyone other than the press)? Posted by: kilgore trout at November 7, 2005 1:22 PM | Permalink The vote to remove Miller's name and the other language from the resolution was 53-51, very close indeed. It is also noteworthy that the Ethics Committee voted its support for the resolution with the Miller language included. Posted by: Gary Hill at November 7, 2005 2:16 PM | Permalink Richard: Fitzgerald addressed this at his press conference and made clear that he regarded Valerie Plame as having covert status before she was outed. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at November 7, 2005 3:20 PM | Permalink Because, kilgore, however tenuous and tentative, there was a momentary peace in the Mideast. But Judy Miller did nothing to protect the 1st Amendment. But then, I recall more than a little umbrage taken over Arafat's award. It's doubtful that anyone outside journalism understands how galling the Miller award issue is. But this, after all, is a discussion on journalism, which makes it a fitting place to discuss SPJ's actions, no? For Richard Aubrey, two points concerning your interesting take on L'Affaire Plame: 1.) Because you believe it is a big deal over nothing doesn't make it so. 2.)Denial is not just a river in Egypt. Posted by: Dave McLemore at November 7, 2005 3:26 PM | Permalink It seems that everyone's favorite investigative journalist may not be returning as soon as rumored. "The Ethics Committee voted its support for the resolution with the Miller language included." Thanks, Gary. Trout: I don't think people outside the press would necessarily be interested, or need to be. People interested in the press or involved in it should be. Troll's rule of thumb: the more disputed the facts are--was she really under cover?--the more you adopt a tone of total certainty, as if any fool with eyes to see knows she wasn't. "Most people know this" was Richard's way of injecting that tone of phony troll certitude. The more ambiguous the evidence, the clearer the troll's "conclusions." The method is guaranteed to get reactions, and thus troll posts another W. Posted by: Jay Rosen at November 7, 2005 4:08 PM | Permalink It's interesting that the SPJ has couched this award in terms of protecting the First Amendment and specifically not ethics. As I understand this (which may be poorly), Miller went to jail to keep a promise; a promise of confidentiality. Promise-keeping is usually understood based on ethics. I would like more of a discussion on the ethics of making a promise, promise-keeping, or the ethical dilemma when keeping one's promise conflicts with other ethical obligations. I would like to understand better how maintaining the "free" flow of information based on confidentiality ... something found in the penumbra of the First Amendment, I guess ... is separable from the ethic of making a promise and keeping it. I also wanted to offer these links for the After section: First Amendment Award From the last link, I found this noteworthy: ... The clergyman “shall claim the privilege on behalf of the person unless the privilege is waived.”Who "owns" the privilege? The journalist or the source? Sisyphus, the way I see it journalists make promises in order. The first promise should be to the readers/public/citizens. It should be to provide as much information, with as much transparency, in as much completeness as possible. The second promise is to the newspaper, to uphold the promise to the reader in the form of practice and work habits and behavior. The last promise is to the source. The way I see it, you can't promise something to a source if it compromises your ability to uphold the previous and more important promises you make as a journalist. What I believe counts for less than what Fitzgerald believes. Speaking of Agee, I'm trying to remember if certain sides of the political divide were as upset about him as about the Plame issue. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at November 7, 2005 4:59 PM | Permalink JennyD: I'll bet if you work on the wording above, we could call it DeMonte's Three Laws of Journalism. Just to riff a bit on JennyD's points: The promise of confidentiality should carry the weight of it being factual and, at some level, verifiable. It's an offer of information, usually inside stuff, that you can't get otherwise. Think Pentagon Papers. Think the insider view of the tobacco industry on its product's cancer-causing properties. Sadly, it too often become a way for those inside to float an agenda. And the reporter's willingness to accept that agenda - either through naivete or a cynical willingness - in order to get a Page 1A byline. I've always felt confidential sources should be used both judiciously and rarely. Most things can go on the record or can be acquired through other sources. It just isn't that necessary to go off the record very often. Generally, the privelege goes to the source. But it takes two to tango. If a source burns the reporter with false or intentionally misleading information, there should be a serious talk between source and reporter whether that voids the warranty. Were I Judy Miller, all bets with Chalabi, Scooter, et al would have been off a long time ago. As for the ethics of a promise: If I break a promise to help you break the law, have I acted unethically? If I break a promise to help you provide false information to readers, have I acted unethically? I don't think so. Your mileage, of course, may vary. Posted by: Dave McLemore at November 7, 2005 5:25 PM | Permalink Dave: If I break a promise to help you break the law, have I acted unethically? ... I don't think so. Your mileage, of course, may vary. It does, and so does yours: Fickle media begins to criticize and question Judith Miller's choice of jail over outing her source. Why Miller is right and her critics wrong. Argument 2: The right to protect a confidential source ends if the source, in leaking information to a reporter, violates the law. The appeal of this argument for Miller's liberal critics is that Karl Rove, her presumed source (and an acknowledged source for Time magazine's Matthew Cooper) may have violated a federal criminal statute--and/or may have perjured himself before the grand jury.I'm reminded of my previous post: Journalists Pass Social Responsibility Test "What the hell was Miller doing?" At last, we find common ground. |
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