In an atmospheric and intuitive article given prominent play on page one today, New York Times reporter Richard W. Stevenson tells us this about a venerable institution under siege:
The routines are the same. But everything, in the glare of the final stages of a criminal investigation that has reached to the highest levels of power in Washington, is different.
There’s an inquiry under way, Stevenson says, with dark foreboding, one that “has the potential to upend the professional lives of everyone” involved. Consequently, the place is gripped by “a mood of intense uncertainty … that veers in some cases into fear of the personal and political consequences … And, given how badly things have been going,” confused and angry employees “hardly have deep reserves of internal enthusiasm or external good will to draw on.”
Can it be? The New York Times is finally writing about its own newsroom and the brooding resentments, suspicions and fear that festered within it over the long weeks that the paper has remained next-to-silent concerning the Judy Miller affair?
Umm, no.
All those passages are from an article about jitters at the White House about the Fitzgerald inquiry — an article that contains exactly one sentence about Judy Miller, who at this point is the fulcrum around which all else in Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation revolves.
And what does the self-proclaimed “newspaper of record” have to say about its own involvement in the case — or its WMD stenographer-in-residence Judith Miller?
The investigation led to the imprisonment of a reporter for the New York Times, Judith Miller, for 85 days for refusing to testify before the grand jury about a conversation with a confidential source, later identified as Mr. Libby.
And that’s it.
In short, even now, the Times still cannot bring itself to admit that it is a central player in this drama. Of course, today is a Friday, and the paper will likely save its eventual piece on Miller’s perplexing involvement for a big Sunday spread. But with Stevenson’s article today, its silence on the matter has moved into the realm of the absurd. It’s true, the paper does have a team of journalists working on a story about Miller under the supervision of Deputy Managing Editor Jonathan Landman, but any hint as to when it will come out — or if Miller will speak — remains the stuff of rumor.
Although officially the Times is keeping mum on the issue — executive editor Bill Keller wouldn’t even tell Salon‘s Farhad Manjoo if in fact Miller will cooperate with Landman’s team — it’s no secret that the staff of the paper isn’t too happy about its handling of the whole affair. As Howard Kurtz reported yesterday, of the dozen or so Times staffers he has spoken to,”[s]ome said the newsroom is more demoralized now than during the 2003 debacle over Jayson Blair’s serial fabrications, because top editors were deceived by Blair but in this case have embraced Miller’s handling of the controversy and level of disclosure.”
One Times employee who did go on the record voicing his displeasure is public editor Barney Calame, who, in a piece published late yesterday on his Web log, writes that “The lifting of the contempt order against Judith Miller of the New York Times in connection with the Valerie Wilson leak investigation leaves no reason for the paper to avoid providing a full explanation of the situation. Now.”
Calame, who until yesterday had maintained a long silence of his own, continues that while he tried to do some reporting on the issue last July, no one at the Times would talk to him about it, presumably for fear of compromising Miller’s legal strategies. But as Calame points out, now that Miller has testified — repeatedly — “legal concerns should no longer rule the roost.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Meanwhile, in a late twist that left reporters and editors across the country raising their eyebrows, the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) revealed that it doesn’t share the discontent of many in the industry over the confounding way the Miller case has unfolded. In fact, it is bringing Miller in to speak at its national conference next week and to present her with its “First Amendment Award.” There will follow a panel discussion titled “The Reporter’s Privilege Under Siege.”
Forgive us if we’re not exactly holding our breath for Miller’s speech, but the only thing we see under siege here is the reputation of the Times — and that of SPJ as well.
Steve Lovelady was editor of CJR Daily.