Burying the lies on Iraq war: Judith Miller and the New York Times...

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Burying the lies on Iraq war

Judith Miller and the New York Times make a deal

By Bill Van Auken
11 November 2005

The deal announced by the New York Times Thursday granting a severance package to its senior correspondent Judith Miller and acceding to various conditions demanded by her lawyers represents one more tawdry episode in the newspaper’s deception of its readers on the war in Iraq.

Both sides agreed to keep silent on the size of Miller’s golden parachute, but it is rumored to be in the high six figures.

One of the conditions of the settlement was reflected in the pages of Thursday’s Times in the form of letter published on the newspaper’s editorial page under the headline “Judith Miller’s farewell.” It consists of a self-serving and evasive defense of her record.

Miller wraps herself in the flag of the First Amendment, presenting herself as a martyr in the struggle to defend freedom of the press and the “right as a journalist to protect a confidential source.”

This is an important principle, and one cannot always pick and choose the issue over which it must be defended.

It is one thing, however, to resist government coercion to reveal the identity of a whistle-blower who has exposed official malfeasance or to protect one who has risked his or her job in order to provide the public with needed insight into affairs of state that have otherwise remained hidden. It is quite another to shield one of the most powerful men in Washington from prosecution for criminal acts.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/mill-n11.shtml