From the much-anticipated New York Times story on the return of Judy Miller to the newsroom yesterday, we learn this:
Executive editor Bill Keller told the staff 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 sprung from jail, 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.”
You got that right, Bill.
But if today’s story, written by reporter Kit Seelye and printed on page A20, is any indication, neither Miller nor the Times is ready to level with its readers about the ins and outs of her strange dance of the seven veils amongst dueling lawyers, judges, prosecutors and editors.
Consider:
Right after Keller’s quote, Seelye writes: “In an interview after her [newsroom] appearance, Ms. Miller said she would cooperate with the newspaper’s reporters.”
Sounds good!
Until we read along for three more paragraphs, where we find this line: “In the interview, she declined to reveal what she had told the grand jury.“
Damn. So much for that promise of cooperation.
Seelye is an able reporter, but this piece, alas, contains just as many unexplained contradictions as most Times pieces about itself do — which is to say, a bundle of them. As our colleague Mike Hoyt has noted, reading the Times about the Times lately is a lot like reading Pravda about the Kremlin 20 years ago: You better bring to the task a magnifying glass, a magic marker and an ability to read not just between the lines but between the words.
Let’s hope the grander piece to come that Keller referred to yesterday finally levels with readers.
A good start toward achieving that goal would be for Keller to recuse himself from directing coverage of this story and from editing the results. Keller is a man of high integrity, but he, as much as Miller, is a part of this story — as is Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, and as are the Times‘ lawyers.
The Times has top editors aplenty capable of guiding a project of this magnitude to print, without higher review, and without anxious attorneys for Miller or the Times looking over their shoulders. Managing editors John Geddes and Jill Abramson, assistant managing editor Al Siegal and public editor Byron Calame come to mind. Let’s hope the newspaper puts them to work.
That way, we’ll all stand a better chance of getting a thorough, dispassionate story, clearly told, about this most confounding of cases for the press and its friends.
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.