Judith Miller was invited to speak at SPJ back in 2005. I was still getting used to being a journalist, and I couldn’t believe the way many of the traditional journalists just took what she said as gospel. She seemed like a shill for the Bush administration to me; a beltway sycophant.
Despite persuading the country to embark on a $2 trillion, 10-year war, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller still has not been shamed out of public life. She’s still here. On your TV screen. Right in front of you. Miller, who produced a series of inaccurate stories claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – stories which so damaged the Times’ reputation the Grey Lady is still trying to bounce back – appeared on “The Daily Show” Wednesday night to promote her new book, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey. But Stewart, like most of us, didn’t care to talk much about the tome. “I believe that you helped the administration take us to, like, the most devastating mistake in foreign policy that we’ve made in, like, 100 years,” he said. “But you seem lovely.” Miller spent most of the interview denying that she had been used by the George W. Bush administration to coax the country into conflict – or, intermittently, saying everyone else was tricked, too. Even the Clintons believed the faulty weapons of mass destruction information (that Miller reported, ahem)! When asked directly if she was in any way manipulated, Miller responded, “all journalists are manipulated and all politicians lie – they all try and spin.”.— Catherine Taibi (@cathtaibi)
(via Huffington Post Media | Judith Miller’s Non-Apology Tour )
Barbara K Iverson 