The Bush Administration & The Press:
The truth is out there.. somewhere
In the days prior to Sunday, Oct. 16, the journalism community was in an uproar. The question that seemed to be on everyone’s mind was: Why hasn’t the New York Times run a story yet about Judy Miller by Judy Miller?
When the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter was released from her jail sentence on Sept. 29 after serving 85 days for refusing to reveal her sources in the Valerie Plame affair, people naturally wanted to hear her story. Instead, they got nothing from the Times. As the days passed and the silence persisted, journalism blogs at first reflected a sense of confusion among the journalism community; confusion turned to frustration, which evolved into downright irritation. And then, at last, Miller’s first-hand account was published.
But rather than quelling suspicion about the chain of events, her story only raised more eyebrows and more questions. What was all this about having a security clearance while embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq searching for those elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction? And why had Miller agreed to identify her source—I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff—in such a misleading way? In other words, what in holy heck was going on?
This whole strange saga is important because it sheds some light on the American media’s conduct thus far during George W. Bush’s administration. The mystery surrounding Miller and the Times is a microcosm of the relationship between the press and Bush’s White House during a not-so-uneventful presidency that is trying to export democracy into Iraq while fighting a global war against terrorism.
Following 9/11, Bush’s agenda became very ambitious, to say the least. There was international support for an American military response in Afghanistan, and action was taken there to remove the Taliban from power. But that was just the appetizer. What Bush really craved was Saddam Hussein and Iraq, and how to go about gaining public support for his aggressive agenda. But Americans traditionally won’t support a war unless there’s a general consensus that it’s absolutely necessary and doing so will protect us from people who intend to harm us. For a president to sell a war there needs to be a fearsome enemy, or at least a perceived one. A perfect candidate conveniently landed in the administration’s lap on 9/11; the war against terrorism became the government’s explanation for everything from infringing on Americans’ privacy with the Patriot Act and creating monstrous new military contracts, to settling old scores with Saddam.
The Miller case forces us to look back at that crucial time period, two to three years ago when Bush was pushing hard for war with Iraq. How was it reported in the American media? At one of the biggest and best newspapers in the country, the New York Times, we now know that there were some seriously inaccurate stories being published about Saddam’s weapons that happened to parallel the White House’s stance: Not only was the Iraqi dictator sitting on a dangerous arsenal of WMDs, but he was also trying to buy uranium to build a nuclear bomb. Given the long-lasting Cold War, it’s common knowledge that, historically, Americans are willing to wage war when threatened with the possibility of being nuked.
Times stories such as “Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert” (April 21, 2003) and “Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against Iraq, Officials Say” (Jan. 24, 2003) by Miller, and “Intelligence Break Led U.S. to Tie Envoy Killing to Iraq Qaeda Cell” by Patrick E. Tyler (Feb. 6, 2003) indicate that the Times quickly got into the habit of running prominently-placed stories that depicted Iraq as an al-Qaida-linked threat that had WMDs and was actively acquiring more.
But there wasn’t just flimsy reporting going on at the Times. After all, editors make decisions about story placement and headlines. In one instance, the headline “U.S. Experts Find Radioactive Material in Iraq” was placed above a Miller story even though, near the top, she wrote that the discovery was most likely unrelated to weapons; this is clearly misleading.
Of course, stories critical of the war were published too. But these were typically buried in the back of the paper. According to former Times public editor Daniel Okrent, James Risen’s story, “C.I.A. Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports,” was finished days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq and “unaccountably held for a week,” not appearing until three days after major military action began—March 23, 2003—and in B10, nonetheless.
“Some of The Times’ coverage in months leading up to the invasion of Iraq was credulous; much of it was inappropriately italicized by lavish front-page display and heavy-breathing headlines; and several fine articles by David Johnston, James Risen and others that provided perspective or challenged information in the faulty stories were played as quietly as a lullaby” (NYT: May 30, 2004).
In fact, even the editors’ note published by the Times to address these issues—including burying stories that were critical of the White House—was buried in A10. Not to mention, the editors’ explanation came a tad late, in May of 2004 (about fourteen months after the war began). In a memo that was posted to Jim Romenesko’s Poynter blog, Times executive editor Bill Keller acknowledged the paper’s slow response time, saying, “By waiting a year to own up to our mistakes, we allowed the anger inside and outside the paper to fester. Worse, we fear we fostered an impression that the Times put a higher premium on protecting its reporters than on coming clean with its readers” (Romenesko: Oct. 21, 2005).
But it wasn’t just the Times that seemed to be helping to sell the war by, among other things, hiding stories critical of the administration in the back of the paper. In an online discussion with readers, Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. was asked for an explanation of why The Post “consistently put what the Bush Administration said on page A1 … and then when something was disproven a few days later, put that information on page A13?” Downie acknowledged this as accurate criticism, responding, “As I have said before, while we did not have evidence at that time to ‘disprove’ what the administration was saying as its rationale for going to war, we did report skepticism expressed by some experts and people in the administration, and we did not often enough put those stories on the front page” (WP: Oct. 5, 2005).
Now back to the question of why the New York Times’ editors waited so long to publicly reevaluate their initial WMD stories. Keller claims he was trying to “get the paper fully back to normal” following the Jayson Blair scandal, which unraveled in May of 2003 and resulted in Keller replacing then-Executive Editor Howell Raines. “It felt somehow unsavory to begin a tenure by attacking our predecessors … I feared the WMD issue could become a crippling distraction” (Romenesko: Oct. 21, 2005). Perhaps the old WMD stories would have never been revisited had the CIA leak case not thrust Miller and the Times into the national spotlight.
So what exactly was Miller up to? When she first went to the slammer, she was portrayed as a journalism martyr, oozing with integrity, taking one for the team to advocate freedom of the press. But soon after leaving jail, despite winning a First Amendment Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Miller began to look more like a pawn who—one way or another—allowed the government to infiltrate, through her, one of the most prestigious newspapers in America to further its war agenda. It’s certainly ironic. Conservative political pundits have always railed against the “liberal media” and seem to regard the Times as the quintessential liberal-friendly media establishment.
“That has been the common wisdom at least since Spiro Agnew denounced (journalists) as ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’ and not too much later, the profession took out his Republican boss,” wrote The State’s associate editor, Cindi Ross Scoppe, in an Oct.4 opinion piece. “And so it has become the lens through which many Republicans view the media...”
The Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page observed in an Oct. 19 column that despite the generalizations often made about the media by conservative critics, they have been “oddly mute about the amazing service that the New York Times’ Judith Miller has performed for the Bush administration’s policy of regime change in Iraq,” adding that she deserves a medal from Bush’s boosters.
Indeed, some have insisted that Miller’s behavior is more like that of a co-conspirator rather than a poster girl for freedom of the press. For instance, many questions have been raised regarding Miller’s agreement to identify Libby as a “former Hill staffer” instead of a “senior administration official.” As Al Franken said during an October appearance on David Letterman’s The Late Show, Miller might as well have agreed to identify Libby as a “former Little League coach.” Franken was no doubt trying to be funny, but he makes a great point. Identifying him the way that was agreed would have been silly.
“What about the ethical question of helping the Bush administration hide its hand in the attack against Wilson?” Page asks. “If ever there was a point where Miller crossed the line from reporter to accomplice, in my humble view, this was certainly it” (CT: Oct. 19, 2005).
Had Miller written a story about Plame and referred to Libby as a “former Hill staffer,” it would not have been a lie, but definitely an effort to obscure her source and lead readers away from the scene of the crime, so to speak. Miller, however, contends that she would never have identified Libby that way. She told NPR’s Renee Montagne, “…I agreed to listen to Mr. Libby’s information on the basis of his attribution as a former Hill staffer. It is very common in Washington to hear information on the basis of one attribution, and then go back to that source if you’re going to use that information, and say, ‘You know, this attribution really won’t fly; let’s come up with something that more accurately reflects your job and what you do’ … I never agreed to identify Mr. Libby in print, in that way, in any one of my stories” (E&P: Nov. 11, 2005).
Unfortunately for journalists who constantly rely on attributing information to anonymous sources that otherwise would not see the light of day, when a reporter carelessly abuses this tactic, the entire newspaper—and perhaps, all of journalism—loses a bit of readers’ trust. Although Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said he didn’t think the Times’ reputation had been damaged by failing to fire Miller (AP: Oct. 28, 2005), on the same day National Journal’s William Powers compared journalism to a “sinking ship” and said, “If you were measuring journalists’ public standing on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the best, right now we’re in less-than-zero territory, thanks to the New York Times and its dodgy handling of the Plame spy case” (NJ: Oct. 28, 2005).
It’s similar to what happens when a reporter like Blair is caught fabricating or plagiarizing. The public becomes more skeptical about their news. But it might be worse to have readers second-guessing anonymous sources because they’re so crucial for the media to be able to uncover fraud and corruption, both inside and outside the government. After all, the “watchdog” role is perhaps the media’s greatest responsibility.
However, in the Miller case, Libby was the opposite of a whistle-blower, which should have been a red flag to Miller to question his motivations. It seems like a reporter as experienced as Miller would first wonder, “What does the administration have to gain by telling me this?” In an Oct. 26 column for the Los Angeles Times, Pat Morrison wrote about the importance of readers being well informed about anonymous sources. He wrote, “Readers need to know as much as they can about even unnamed sources, to judge how solid or suspect that source’s information and motives may be.”
And then there’s the issue of the security clearance Miller claims to have
been granted by the government. This, too, is ironic. Why would a woman who went to jail claiming she’s trying to protect “the public’s right to know” enter in to an agreement that essentially denies the public information? If she really did have a security clearance while hunting for WMDs in 2003, it’s bad news. If her editors at the Times were aware of her status, it’s even worse because they should never have allowed her to get into such a self-censoring situation. No wonder she called herself Miss Run-Amok. In an Oct. 16 letter to Romenesko, retired CBS news correspondent Bill Lynch wrote, “Miller … violated her duty to report the truth by accepting a binding obligation to withhold key facts the government deems secret, even when that information might contradict the reportable ‘facts’.”
All of this reflects on this administration’s efforts to manage the media by way of endless manipulation and spinning. The White House circulated exaggerations, half-truths and possibly even outright lies in the press, who then disseminated them to the public. But that was just the half of it. There was also, as the Plame situation illustrates, an effort by the administration to smear its critics, thereby containing information that went against its argument for war.
As Bush said, “You’re either with us or against us,” and that’s how the White House has played it so far—not just with terrorists and the nations that harbor them, but with the media as well. Anyone who didn’t happily accept the administration’s explanations for war was accused of being un-American, unpatriotic (the last thing any American wants to be labeled in this post-9/11 “us vs. them” climate of American nationalism). So not only have reporters by and large been hesitant to criticize the government for fear of a nasty reaction from the public, but from the White House too.
But smear tactics don’t just apply to war criticism; they have also suppressed questions about the timing of terror warnings. On Oct. 7, Congressional Quarterly columnist Craig Crawford wrote, “I worry about the news media being forced to take these dire warnings at face value despite the pattern of politicians provoking these episodes at suspiciously opportune moments.” Crawford cited last summer’s East Coast terror warnings that were “based on outdated intelligence” and happened to coincide with the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
And then there was the recent Oct. 6 warning of possible attacks in New York City’s subways, which followed a speech Bush gave about the looming threat of terrorism on American soil and happened to overshadow the announcement that Karl Rove would have to testify again in front of a grand jury. “The news media should be aggressive and skeptical from the outset about the possibility of manipulation in these moments, so that public officials are not tempted to play games with terror threats as yet another news management tool. Instead, we have an environment that spooks reporters and their bosses off this trail … because they know the politicians will attack them for being callous, or worse, treasonous. Letting politicians bully us from doing our jobs does not serve the public. It only serves the politicians” (CBS: Oct. 7, 2005).
Unfortunately for Bush and his cronies, while playing the game of politics-as-usual in Washington, a law was broken when Plame’s name and job title were leaked to the press. That alone illustrates how badly the administration wanted the war to go off without a hitch, and how important they knew it was to maintain control of the collective public perception that Saddam was a threat to us and somehow related to the spectacular events of 9/11. Between the Patriot Act, the dissemination of misinformation to the public and suspiciously timed terror warnings, it seems like very sneaky, behind-the-scenes, Orwellian stuff was going on and most likely continues to occur at the White House.
So what happened to bringing integrity back to the presidency? On Sept. 23, 2000, Bush said, “Just because our White House has let us down in the past, that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen in the future,” and called his campaign one “that’s going to restore honor and dignity to the White House.” The month before, on Aug. 2, Cheney said, “On the first hour of the first day, we will restore decency and integrity to the Oval Office … We offer another way, a better way, and a stiff dose of truth.”
If this is truth we’ve been getting—a “stiff dose,” nonetheless—one wonders what lies and speculation would sound like. As a matter of fact, some contend that Bush’s White House is the most secretive in American history—even more so than Richard Nixon’s. Last year, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) released an 81-page report analyzing the Bush administration’s management of major open government laws. “The report finds that … laws that are designed to promote public access to information have been undermined, while laws that authorize the government to withhold information or to operate in secret have repeatedly been expanded. The cumulative result is an unprecedented assault on the principle of open government” (Press Release: Sept. 14, 2004).
The increasing governmental secrecy, in conjunction with the diminishing free flow of information, makes the need for good journalism even greater. If journalists won’t hold the government accountable, who will? All this secrecy in a delicate time of war—when there’s already strong anti-U.S. sentiment around the world—is dangerous. It’s expected, although not defendable, from the government. But it’s the job of journalists to get the truth, not pass questionable information on to John Q. Public’s breakfast table.
I believe we were misled into the Iraq war. I think the world was shown the most dramatic, worst-case-scenario intelligence while the White House withheld the caveats. The decision to go to war is perhaps the most important that a president has to make; it’s literally a matter of life and death, which is why it should be approached by the media with great care and skepticism. Unfortunately, the press is easily excited by such exciting news and always in a hurry to be first. As is evident in the coverage leading up to the war, a good deal of caution went out the window when all the titillating so-called intelligence started to fly.
Of course, what’s done is done. We can’t change the past. But the media should be working to improve current and future White House coverage. The press should especially begin examining how the government goes about gathering intelligence, because in retrospect, the war was the result of a lot of bad intelligence that wasn’t really questioned.
On Nov. 2, the Washington Post ran a story about the CIA’s secret “black site” interrogation and holding prisons in Eastern Europe, which re-ignited the torture debate. Five days later, in Panama, Bush went so far as to proclaim, “We do not torture.” But the world already saw the grisly photographs from Abu Ghraib. The truth is we have tortured, and given the fact that we use clandestine holding facilities for suspected terrorists in obscure parts of the world, odds are the inmates there are tortured to a certain extent in exchange for information that ends up in the news.
In fact, according to the Post story, one of the “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” employed in the overseas sites is “waterboarding,” a technique that makes the person on the board think he’s being drowned. Sen. John McCain addressed this practice in a piece he wrote for the Nov. 21 issue of Newsweek, saying that “if you gave people who have suffered abuse as prisoners a choice between a beating and a mock execution, many, including me, would choose a beating … In my view, to make someone believe that you are killing him by drowning is no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank. I believe that it is torture, very exquisite torture” (Newsweek: Nov. 21, 2005).
As McCain pointed out, history has shown that torture is not a productive way to get information because the people being tortured just rattle off whatever they think their captors want to hear. Hence the bad pre-war intelligence gleaned from suspected terrorists imprisoned after 9/11. There was also inaccurate intelligence attributed to Iraqi defectors and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi that showed up in newspapers such as the Times. Kudos to the Post for exposing the CIA’s secret prisons, but the media now needs to shine a light on the broader issue of U.S. intelligence gathering to increase awareness and help prevent future errors that lead our servicemen and women into harm’s way.
Generally, Americans don’t get a realistic portrayal of war from the media. Each day, the numbers roll in—“X-amount of U.S. soldiers killed in a suicide bombing” is all you hear. And it’s so routine now, more than two years after the war began, that nobody even seems to care. Personally, I want to see much more blood in the war coverage. I want to see more images of flag-covered coffins and first-hand accounts of horrendous battles and bombings. Plus, I want to hear about the civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course, the U.S. Military doesn’t keep track of that statistic. But the highest estimate in Iraq is more than 100,000. Ideally, the media should get the message across that war is sad, nasty business. But then again, that’s easier said than done. If a major U.S. newspaper portrayed the reality of war, it would be inundated with hate mail saying it dishonored our troops.
For all the satire Bush has inspired with his apparent lack of intelligence, his administration might be the most media savvy since John F. Kennedy’s. Whoever it is in the White House that’s orchestrating the way they deal with the media—my money’s on Rove—that person’s doing an outstanding job. Basically, if you had something to say or report as a journalist that challenged the administration, you could not win because the White House would smear you if you weren’t first buried by your editors. Unfortunately, that means that we’re being deprived of the truth.
Until this CIA leak controversy began, I thought journalists definitely deserved a federal shield law, but now I’m not so sure. Imagine if self-interested politicians could be identified in deceptive, round-about ways all the time to spread misinformation around the public and better serve their agendas. In some cases, such a law would do more harm than good. But the reverse is true, too. It depends on the context of the situation. All in all, I think Miller should have written a story examining the motivations of the administration in leaking Plame’s name. It’s a shame that the practice of protecting anonymous sources was being used to serve the shady interests of government officials.
I don’t think Miller should have received an award from SPJ. Jenny DeMonte did some probing in an interview with SPJ President Irwin Gratz and quoted him as saying, “We did not give Judy Miller an ethics award.” Gratz went on to explain that, despite the organization’s reservations about Miller’s reporting practices, the greater good was the attention that Miller’s time in jail would bring to the issue of reporters’ need for a federal shield law; hence the award (PressThink: Nov. 4, 2005). In a Nov. 16 letter to SPJ’s Executive Committee, the Deadline Club chapter of SPJ expressed disagreement with the timing of Miller’s award, saying “the Society acted in haste in honoring (Miller).”
Even though I think the leading U.S. papers took a hit for their handling of the run-up to the Iraq war, newspapers and blogs are still the best sources for news. And I especially think the Times’ credibility has taken another dive as a result of “Plamegate,” however, I do not think it’s something the third most circulated paper in America can’t recover from. It’s a good thing that Miller has resigned; now Keller just needs to get his act together and be the kind of leader that can revitalize the Times. All Keller has to do is the opposite of the isolationist stance he took when he replaced Raines. It’s understandable why he didn’t want to crack down on Miller—or any Times employee—at a time of turmoil following the Blair scandal. Keller was the new guy and wanted to get things going back in a positive direction, so Miller was allowed a very long leash. Hopefully, in retrospect, Keller realizes he ultimately made the wrong decision in handling Miller when he got to the Times and should have nipped it in the bud immediately with a hard-hitting investigation of everything his predecessors had permitted.
The idea of a free press is as American as baseball or apple pie. The concept of sharing thoughts, information and ideas without government interference is one of the things that were hard to come by before Europeans embarked for The New World. Our free press is a cornerstone of our free nation. And possibly the best example of American journalism being applied correctly and doing what it should is the work of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, which led to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974 following the Watergate scandal. To me, they’re true patriots for sticking to the scent of truth and corruption, and not letting fraud fester in the White House. During wartime today, if you ask too many critical questions about policies or are skeptical about anything that you’re being told, then you’re a freedom-hater who doesn’t support the troops. In my opinion, it’s the narrow-minded people who take everything that administration officials say for gospel that are being un-American. Our politicians are just a minority representing all Americans. And it’s the press’s job to serve as a government watchdog and keep the public informed of what’s really going on—not what government officials say is happening.
Otherwise, the press is just a platform for the government—like a huge advertising campaign—and that’s a dangerous situation to be in. Unfortunately, I think we are in that state more and more these days; the sun seems to have set on Woodward and Bernstein’s gutsy style of reporting.
According to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll conducted Nov. 7 through Nov. 9, Bush’s approval rating was at an all-time low 37 percent. “Almost six in 10 now say Bush is not honest, and a similar number say his administration does not have high ethical standards” (AP: Lester-Nov. 11, 2005). Just the week before, Bush ordered administration officials to attend ethics classes.
In an Oct. 27 Editor & Publisher story, Joe Strupp quoted Carl Bernstein as saying, “What we are seeing is a broad question of the honesty of how we got into this war and the honesty of a presidency” (E&P: Oct. 27, 2005).
The late Hunter S. Thompson was able to make the connection between governmental secrecy and media laziness in January of 2003—long before Plame’s name was leaked, even before we preemptively invaded Iraq. Thompson was quoted as saying, “We're a war-crazy, war-dependent, really, nation and that leads right to the oil industry. It is ridiculous. And particularly in the media; with the media I noticed. To not discuss the connection between oil and bombs in Iraq is disgraceful … No, it’s just ignorance, and well, the media, we're being deprived of the real news” (Democracy Now: Feb. 23, 2005).
The Greek playwright Aeschylus once said, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” This comes from a guy who died in 456 BC; it’s amazing, but his theory still rings true in 2005. According to Bush, America was thrust into war on 9/11. I think it’s safe to say that at least since then, truth hasn’t exactly been in abundance. Now it’s up to the media to rectify the situation.
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