While browsing the internet on this Sunday before Christmas, be sure to stop by The Poor Man where you can vote for the ChickenHawk of the Year.
Choices include Jean Schmidt, Young Republicans, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Joe Lieberman, Judy Miller and many more. Some good holiday fun as you decide who is the biggest chicken when it comes to wanting to defend our nation.
Howard Kurtz has an interesting column in the
Washington Post today where he has examined the response of the blogosphere
to Judith Miller's story.
While questions are being asked around the internet about her security
clearance that she received from the Department of Defense (see this article at
Poynter Online by
former CBS correspondent Bill Lynch), there is also mounting questions
being raised over her true integrity has a journalist. One part of Kurtz's
column raises that question even more where he talks about a former contract
writer for the New York Times, Craig Pyes, who worked with Miller on a story
about Al Qaeda in 2000. Pyes was so disgruntled with the work of Miller that he
actually wrote the editors and asked his name not appear on the byline.
"I'm not willing to work further on this project with Judy Miller," wrote
Pyes, who now writes for the Los Angeles Times. He added: "I do not trust
her work, her judgment, or her conduct. She is an advocate, and her actions
threaten the integrity of the enterprise, and of everyone who works with her
. . . She has turned in a draft of a story of a collective enterprise that
is little more than dictation from government sources over several days,
filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies," and "tried to
stampede it into the paper."
Full story
here
Via
Raw Story:
Reporter in leak case to take leave of
absence effective immediately10/15/2005 @ 4:19 pm Filed by John Byrne and Jason Leopold
New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in jail
protecting her source in the recent CIA leak investigation, will take an
indefinite leave of absence effective immediately.Advertisement "Judy is going to take some time off until we decide what
she is doing next," Times' spokesperson Catherine Mathis told RAW STORY
Saturday afternoon.RAW STORY spoke with Miller by telephone at the New York Times newsroom
in Washington Friday evening. She said that she had not previously been
questioned about her plans going forward, and deferred extended comment to
her publicist.The Times' Sunday story asserts that Miller has not signed a book deal as
previously reported."She said she thought she would write a book about her experiences in the
leak case, although she added that she did not yet have a book deal," the
article says. "She also plans on taking some time off but says she hopes to
return to the newsroom."Two reporters inside the newsroom say they have heard Miller will resign
from the paper.Miller was not cooperative with the Times internal probe, reporters told
RAW STORY Thursday. This was confirmed in the New York Times' internal
probe."In two interviews, Ms. Miller generally would not discuss her
interactions with editors, elaborate on the written account of her grand
jury testimony or allow reporters to review her notes," the Times reporters
wrote.The paper's executive editor, Bill Keller, says Miller provided a
"detailed report."
Judy Miller finally released her account today of her ordeal surrounding the
Valerie Plame leak (full New York Times article
here). I
have not read the entire article in full, but have read an interesting diagnosis
into it done by
Editor and Publisher magazine.
For the first time this clearly, Miller, in today's article, admits, "WMD--I
got it totally wrong," but then goes on to say that "all" of the other
journalists, and experts and analysts, also were wrong. "I did the best job
I could," she said.The article reveals, also for the first time, that Keller took her off
Iraq and weapons issues after he became editor in July 2003. Nevertheless,
he admits, that "she kept drifting on her own back into the national
security realm," making one wonder who was in charge of her.
Full article
here
Reading that line there got me thinking about an article that appeared in
The Nation a couple
years ago. The article was comparing Judith Miller to Jayson Blaire, the
reporter who ultimately lost his job for plagiarism and not backing up his work.
