In looking at the continuing saga of Dame Judith’s promotion to martyrdom in the cause of the First Amendment, I was struck by the vehement defense of the selfsame Dame by the editorialists at NYT.In not one but three separate editorials, the have compared this sleazebag to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and barely missed canonizing her.
To me that defense and the heavy promotion of the WMD stories without verification by the NYT shows that the Times as an institution either got stuck with Judy’s preposterous claims or was itself part of the enablers for the war on Iraq.This would not be the first time American Press has served as propaganda tools for administrations.
The politicization of the media has been a key story over the past 25 years. A generation of baby-boomer heirs to media empires has turned once-respected publications into propaganda sheets. Most outstanding among these are Arthur Sulzberger and Steven Forbes.
From token conservative Safire to Brooks, Wilgoren, Nigourney, ….and Miller.
One of my journalist friends once said that a newspaper is in deep trouble when it is the news instead of reporting the news.
In Judy Miller’s case, we have a True Believer, who wanted in on the action from the very beginning.She developed the WMD story and with Chalabi’s assistance promoted the whole story about the undiscovered WMD’s.My main question was how did a lowly reporter get the authority to hoodwink the editorial board into publishing four major features by Judy without any corroborating evidence? And, why, when they did retract the stories, there was never a mention of the J word anywhere?
This is why I believe that either there was active collaboration between Judy and her bosses or they are just plain ignorant asses in the mold of you know who.