Newspapers are seldom comfortable, or entirely forthcoming, when events call for them to write about themselves — witness almost any paper’s coverage of, say, its own labor negotiations. But the Judy Miller case has caused the New York Times to scale new heights of nondisclosure.
Granted, the paper is trying to wear two hats at once — as an active player in the Miller case and as an impartial arbiter dedicated to getting to the bottom of complicated issues and events. But when it comes to serving readers, the second hat should dominate.
It hasn’t.
In July, for example, the Times published one of the stranger stories in its recent history, in which investigative reporter Doug Jehl asked a series of logical questions concerning Miller’s goings-on in the summer of 2003.
In the wake of Joe Wilson’s op-ed piece for the Times accusing the Bush administration of false claims, had Miller been assigned to report further on Wilson’s trip to Africa? Or was she just nosing around on her own?
Had she written a story about it that the Times chose not to publish? Or had she decided herself there was no story there of sufficient merit to pursue?
Had she informed her editors who, if anyone, had revealed to her Valerie Plame’s identity — or the nature of Plame’s role, if any, in initiating Wilson’s trip?
From Times executive editor Bill Keller, and from Times legal counsel George Freeman, Jehl received little but a string of “no comment”s.
The article all but cried out for an accompanying cartoon showing a frustrated Jehl banging his head against a brick wall labeled “Miller-Keller-Freeman.”
Perhaps sufficiently chastised, neither Jehl nor any other Times reporter made any apparent effort to advance the story as July turned to August, August to September, and September to October.
Then, briefly, earlier this week, it appeared that with Miller’s release from jail the Times had suddenly remembered, “Hey, wait — we’re a newspaper!” On the occasion of Miller’s return to the newsroom last Monday, Keller told the staff that the newspaper plans to publish “a full account” of the Miller saga as soon as “this weekend.” Keller continued: “I know that you and our readers still have a lot of questions about how this drama unfolded.” Now that Miller is freed, he said, “we intend to answer those questions to the best of our ability in a thoroughly reported piece in the pages of the New York Times, and soon. We owe it to our readers and we owe it to you, our staff.”
But now comes the first hint that Keller, in his difficult dual role of servant to the Times readership and player in the Miller-Times legal strategy, may not be able to deliver on his assurance of a “thoroughly reported piece” as soon as this coming weekend.
As the Times noted this morning, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has asked Miller to a meeting next Tuesday to further discuss her contacts two years ago with Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Cheney. The newspaper also notes that Fitzgerald has not indicated whether Miller’s testimony before his grand jury is finished. And Keller told reporter David Johnston that Miller’s lawyers are loathe to have her reveal what she told the grand jury until Fitzgerald is done with her.
“This development may slow things down a little, but we owe our readers as full a story as we can tell, as soon as we can tell it,” Keller said.
Obviously, the Times cannot force Miller to spill the beans about her grand jury testimony to her fellow reporters, especially if her attorneys keep leaping in and clapping their hands over her mouth. But that testimony — which she is not under legal obligation to keep secret — is so central to understanding this confounding case that it’s hard to imagine a “full account” of the whole tangled mess that didn’t tell us what we want to know — what did Judy Miller tell the grand jury?
Once again, it seems, the New York Times finds itself tied in knots, stymied at least temporarily by its own reporter’s legal strategy, with readers left holding the short end of the stick. Meantime, a voice from its hallowed past comes to mind. That voice belonged to Arthur Hays Sulzberger, grandfather of the newspaper’s current publisher, who exactly fifty years ago wrote:
“A community which is assured a free press is entitled to a frank press.”
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.