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Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Judith Miller's Chutzpa. Just got this release from PR over at Barnard: New York Times Correspondent Judith Miller Calls For Media Examination of Embedding Experience in Iraq
Speaking to Barnard College Graduates, She Asks Whether Objectivity was Compromised by Embedded Combat Correspondents
New York, N.Y. - Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent Judith Miller told the graduating class at Barnard College on Tuesday (May 20, 2003) that the media and the military must examine whether embedding journalists with combat troops in Iraq compromised the media's ability to report objectively or strained the military's performance.
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In her speech, Miller, who had been embedded as a journalist with the 75th Exploitation Task Force, the military unit searching for weapons of mass destruction, said she returned from Baghdad within the last few days with mixed feelings about the war.
While praising the American soldiers for their courage, commitment and sacrifice, she said many unanswered questions remain about the war itself, including the circumstances under which it was started, the justification the Bush administration gave for it and its consequences in the Middle East and at home.
"I have no doubt that deposing Saddam Hussein was a good thing in Iraq," said Miller, who shared the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 with a team of Times' colleagues for a series of articles on Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. She is co-author of a book about the first gulf war, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, and co-author of the bestseller Germs:Biological Weapons and America's Secret War."
She said the United States has mishandled post-war security, leading ordinary Iraqis to question American commitment to the country. "The whole world knows that we can blow things up," she said. "The issue now is whether we have the staying power to help foreign people build a better future for themselves and their children."
Miller called for the journalistic equivalent of a military "after-action report" on the embedding experience. "Journalists need to draw conclusions about whether objectivity was compromised during the war," she said. "The military needs to consider whether the strain of taking care of us and protecting us, and giving us dangerous information, was an undue burden on the military. We all need to decide whether the country's interests were best served by this arrangement."
She also said now that the first phase of the war has ended, the Bush administration will have to answer many questions, including whether the weapons of mass destruction that were used as a justification for war can be uncovered. "Were those who wanted to go to war deceiving themselves about Saddam's capabilities?" she asked. I'd asked if there was going to be a press availability, which there wasn't, so I didn't go. For why this is the pinnacle in chutzpa, see Jack Shafer's analysis of Miller's WMD "scoop", of which Shafer writes:In "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert" (Page One, April 21) Miller disclosed that she agreed to 1) embargo her story for three days; 2) permit military officials to review her story prior to publication; 3) not name the found chemicals; and 4) to refrain from identifying or interviewing the Iraqi scientist who led Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha to sites where he maintained Iraqis had buried chemical precursors to banned chemical weapons. We have little reason to think that most journalists' reporting was tainted by embedding -- there's no evidence of it. But we have significant reason to think that Miller herself produced tainted stories as a direct result of the embedding process.
Steven I. Weiss 5:21:00 PM
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