Judith Miller should testify

Vladimir Pozner, former Radio Moscow personality, who may be the kind of media person Judith Miller aspired to be.



Atrios is going in the right direction on Judith Miller. See here, and here.

She's most likely not testifying not out of some grand journalistic ethic, but more likely that she could no longer continue her role as scribe for the administration's official propaganda, which has been like Vladimir Pozner was in the 80's on Radio Moscow, even echoing some of the authoritarianness of the regime.

But let's face it: rather than actually investigating and reporting, Miller was basically a journalism-school educated version of Jeff Gannon, without all the feigned outright conservative agitprop. She basically functioned as a mouthpiece for Chalabi, and for the "unnamed sources" who made deliberate "leaks that weren't really leaks" in the Bush administiration.

Now, evidently, prosecutors may be interested in criminal contempt charges against her, which, I suspect, if it yields what the prosecutors want, might make Judy Miller a worse Times scandal than Jayson Blair by a factor of ten or so.


The Times would do well to get Miller to testify. It's good for the conscience, and would actually help her re-establish her credibility as a reporter, because then she'd actually have to do more than just parrot the officials of the Bush regime to get stories.