Thoughts on NYT /J.Miller 2002 reporting

I'm still thinking quite often about the issues discussed in class last week regarding Judith Miller and the NY Times reporting of Iraq's weapons programs. The primary conclusion that sticks in my mind is how the Bush administration rigged a perfect scenario for getting the public to accept the official line about Iraq's supposed WMD's -- get the New York Times to publish stories about the "threat", which will carry a lot of weight with the American public and mute criticism from the left. They deftly used the most highly regarded newspaper in the country to plant distorted intelligence reports purporting to show Iraq actively working to create nuclear weapons (the aluminum tubes, etc.).

By getting the paper that typifies the so-called liberal media to report on supposed weapons programs, the administration and it's supporters could convey a message that essentially said, "hey, even the New York Times says that Saddam is trying to build WMDs, so it must be true..." They were fortunate also in having Miller as the main defense correspondent, as she apparently was very willing to believe what the Pentagon hawks were claiming, and not probe too far to find the flaws just under the surface. From things I've read about her history at the Times and the low regard many editors and other reporters had for her, this was a case of an insecure and highly ambitious reporter looking to gain some respect and envy from colleagues by getting a high-profile story published, along with others on the WMD issue. In addition to Miller pursuing these stories for personal reasons, I sense that there might have been a feeling among some NYT senior editors that they wanted to publish her pieces as a way to show objectivity - a way to signal that the Times wasn't always or only critical about the Bush administration.

When the truth was discovered that Saddam did not have a working nuclear weapons program, Miller was quite surprised and understandably on the defensive about being so credulous about reporting on the inside information she had been given by her administration sources. In the Frontline documentary, she tried to explain herself by falling back on the common excuse that she had just reported the information provided by her sources. Unfortunately for her, and us, the intelligence summaries she saw were not the normally objective and reliable reports. As Seymour Hersch and others later found, the administration demanded that only data supporting the view of WMD efforts be put forward, and that they should ignore conflicting signs. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other war advocates in the administration were forcing the CIA and other intelligence bodies to tell them what they wanted to hear about Iraq's apparent bomb-making activities.

There's so much that has been and can be said about the whole co-opting of the media leading up to the Iraq invasion, but I'm still amazed to see just how thoroughly Miller and the Times were manipulated. It remains one of the long-term negative legacies of the W's presidency.