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

Incidentally the article goes on to say that Pyes, who now writes for the
L.A. Times did not have a problem with the article as it was published. The
articles did help him win a Pulitzer prize after all!

I brought up an article published by the Nation in 2003 during an earlier
entry,

“Judith Millers Propaganda” . In that article, Russ Baker compared Judith
Miller to the ousted Jayson Blair who was plagiarizing other peoples work
instead of writing his own stories. While Blair invented sources and stole
others work, Miller actually used unaccredited sources or would just dictate
what people in the White House asked her to.

The evidence keeps piling up against Miller. Her crime, while not criminal,
borders more on being ethical. Perhaps she spent that time in Jail protecting
herself and not her source. Seems as though she knew once the story would get
out that people would start connecting the dots and realize that she did not
actually report but rather was one of the “catapults” for George Bush’s
propaganda. With her job in jeopardy at the New York Times and the rumored book
deal appearing as only that – a rumor, Judith Miller must now face her midlife
crisis of changing jobs. In a few years, most likely she will be a name only in
passing and not one in the biggest story in recent history. Seems that Woodward
and Bernstein’s place as the greatest investigative journalists is well
protected.