More on the Gray Lady (New York Times)

I have left little doubt how I feel about Judith Miller and the New York Times in recent weeks including this:

The Downing Street Memo and other sources have left little doubt that we are mired in a quagmire in Iraq because of serial lies and deceit on the part of the Bush administration. It is also obvious that the administration had a great deal of help from the main stream media including The New York Times. Much of the Times culpability is the result of articles by the neocon's propaganda queen, Judith Miller. While the Times has issued a weak apology for it's coverage in the lead up to the war rather than fire Judith Miller they have attempted to make her a saint and martyr.

"Judy is an intrepid, principled, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has provided our readers with thorough and comprehensive reporting throughout her career," said Catherine Mathis, VP of corporate communications for the newspaper.

While the Times continues to present a united front in support of Judith Miller Arianna Huffington reports in Editor and Publisher that off the record that's not the case.

Huffington said her sources include journalists, social acquaintances of Miller's, general readers of the Huffington Post, and others. "But perhaps the most important category [of sources] is very serious, very responsible reporters within The New York Times who are worried about the paper linking itself so completely with Miller's fate," Huffington told E&P Online.

She also said "the mainstream media are having a hard time -- or are just uninterested in -- following the thread that the Miller story isn't just about the outing of Valerie Plame but about the misinformation campaign that led us into the Iraq debacle."

[....]

And, Huffington continued, "you really cannot separate the extent to which Miller's weapons-of-mass-destruction reporting played a part in backing the neocon agenda from the way in which her actions in the Plame affair are effectively protecting her neocon sources. The Plame scandal is not a separate issue from Miller's WMD reporting. Indeed, it occurred as part of her WMD reporting" -- which Huffington called "deeply flawed."

So why is the Times backing Miller? "That's the $64,000 question that, without exception, all my sources connected to The New York Times -- both those still at the paper and those no longer there -- are asking," replied Huffington. "The consensus is that Miller always played by different rules than other reporters. ..."

She added: "Don't forget the paper stuck with her even as her reporting on Iraq and WMD was being discredited. Indeed, when the paper ran its unprecedented editorial mea culpa in May 2004, her name was never mentioned -- even though she had penned four of the six articles that the paper was apologizing for."

Josh Marshall goes as far to compare Judith Miller and Jayson Blair.

Allegedly, what brought down the Raines regime at the Times was not simply that he and the paper on his watch had been taken in by a serial fabricator, Jayson Blair. It was that he and his team had missed, ignored or made excuses for other warnings signs about Blair. And this was taken, perhaps not unreasonably, as evidence of a deeper pattern of poor editorial judgment, with political and cultural implications we all remember.

Now, let's assume, for the sake of discussion (but as I and many others believe), that Judy Miller is sitting in that prison cell for much more than the actions one might reasonably call those of a journalist. Assume that she has dirty hands in this whole affair and that the Times has quite publicly and effusively fastened its credibility to hers.

If this all proves to be the case, how will this be any different for Keller and Sulzberger than the Blair matter was for Raines?

After all, going back two years now, the Times has quite publicly and painfully failed to take any account of or responsibility for Miller's compromised reporting. And the backstory many of us suspect to her present confinement (though it is important to say that they remain suspicions and are not proved) was richly telegraphed or foreshadowed in that earlier reporting.

So if this all comes to pass, what will the upshot be for Keller? Isn't it the same? Actually, isn't it a lot worse when you consider that the real-world consequences of Blair's lies were limited at best. Journalistically they were capital offenses. But the stories he made up, from my recollection at least, were mainly human interest type stories (with the exception of some reporting about the DC sniper), which might well have been true, but weren't. The consequences of Miller's deeds are legion; and just as ignored.

The Gray Lady has fallen and she can't get up. In my mind this is the end of a journalistic institution and their are some real journalists with the times that realize this. When the Times starts to charge for online content next month they may find that few are willing to open up their checkbooks. I know I won't