Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Did Judy get anything right - ever?

Poynter has a piece from Barabara Crosette, former UN bureau chief, reminding us that Judy's post WMD work was horseshit, too:
Obscured behind the large issues of weapons of mass destruction and Joseph Wilson's links with the CIA is another story. Over the last year or so, Judith Miller also wrote a series of damaging reports on the "oil for food" scandal at the United Nations -- in particular, personally damaging to Secretary General Kofi Annan because the reports were frequently based on half-truths or hearsay peddled on Capitol Hill by people determined to force Annan out of office. At the UN, this was interpreted as payback for the UN's refusal to back the US war in Iraq. As a former NYT UN bureau chief [now retired] I have been asked repeatedly by diplomats, former US government officials, journalists still reporting from the organization and others why Times editors did not step in to question some of this reporting -- a lot of it proved wrong by the recent report by Paul Volcker -- or why the paper seemed to be on a vendetta against the UN.

One of the many things the Times has to do to rehabilitate itself is go back and score every one of her stories, going back at least five or ten years, for veracity. As it did with the merely embarassing Jayson Blair kerfluffle, the Times needs to come clean on just how badly Judy played her putative employer. The stakes, for the Times and the country, are much higher this time.

One way or another, Judy's head is going to end up on a pike. The Times must choose between doing the piking and joining her there.

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