There's no news to report in the Valerie Plame case. But it seems, at least in some circles, that it's always a good day to say something nasty about Judith Miller. The New York Times reporter has been in jail in Virginia for a month and a half now, and today she gets a shout-out from the opposite coast. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer says that Miller should be thinking less about protecting her sources and more about serving the public.
Scheer says "the biggest problem with Miller is that her commitment to a biased and manipulative Bush administration and Iraqi exile sources clearly has been stronger than her commitment to reporting the truth." As proof, he offers up a list of front-page headlines for pieces Miller wrote on Iraq: "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts"; "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert"; "U.S. Analysts Link Iraq Labs to Germ Arms"; "Iraqi Tells of Renovations at Sites for Chemical and Nuclear Arms."
"To be sure, Miller didn't make anything up, she just relayed whatever her anonymous sources told her -- nearly all of which turned out to be garbage," Scheer writes. "In this way, Miller and other reporters like her can pretend to follow the letter of journalistic protocol while flouting its spirit and purpose. What she should have done was challenge her sources and then stop protecting them when she found out their information was false."
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