The Failed Pacifist

Judith Miller Award Reversed

Judith Miller, who is currently in jail for refusing to name her sources in the Plame investigation, will not be receiving this year's Conscience in Media award from The American Society of Journalists and Authors. The board of that organization today unanimously voted to reverse an earlier decision to give Miller the award.

Despite her Pulitzer prize, Miller's spotty reporting over the years has caused many to question whether she deserved the prize. One member of the ASJA First Amendment committee quit when Miller's award was originally announced. At that time, Anita Bartholomew summed it up this way in her resignation letter:

"The First Amendment is designed to prevent government interference with a free press. Miller, by shielding a government official or officials who attempted to use the press to retaliate against a whistleblower, and scare off other would-be whistleblowers, has allied herself with government interference with, and censorship of, whistleblowers. When your source IS the government, and the government is attempting to use you to target a whistleblower, the notion of shielding a source must be reconsidered. To apply standard practices regarding sources to hiding wrongdoing at the highest levels of government perverts the intent of the First Amendment."

This morning, NPR ran a story detailing some of the good and bad things about Miller, including nearly breathless accounts of her bravery while traveling in Afghanistan, and mentions that she's spending her summer vacation reading The Gulag Archipelago. Oh, how very heroic. It also mentions that Miller played a critical role in disseminating false information which was later used by the Bush administration as justification for the Iraq war.

posted by Doran @ 5:22 PM