PR WATCH

Editor&Publisher: MILLER TIME OUT

"On Sept. 29, a remarkable story appeared on the front page of The
New York Times," William E. Jackson, Jr. writes in Editor &
Publisher. Far down in the story there is a mea culpa for reporting
by the Times' Judith Miller on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass
destruction. Miller's stories relied heavily on information and
defectors provided by the Iraqi National Congress's Ahmad Chalabi.
"Miller is not a neutral, nor an objective journalist," Jackson
writes. "This can be acceptable, if you're a great reporter, "but
she ain't, and that's why she's a propagandist,'" a former Times
employee told Jackson. "One major rule that she consistently
violates, when she is not sharing a byline, is that of 'protecting
the paper's neutrality.' The editors know, of course, that she is
an ideological neo-conservative, close to the Bush administration
neo-cons, and thoroughly identified with them. She had called for
the overthrow of Saddam's regime in non-Times publications and had
also spoken out before the war in public speeches for which she was
paid," Jackson writes.

SOURCE: Editor & Publisher, October 2, 2003