Foreword: representation, truth, fiction & etc.

[pynchonoid]

<http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030623&s=baker>

[...] Who's the exact opposite of Jayson Blair, the
New York Times reporter accused of inventing sources
and quotes, plagiarizing and other sins? Well, how
about Judith Miller? Where Blair is young and black
and inexperienced, a rookie journalist whose job was
largely to interview ordinary people, Miller is
middle-aged and white and a veteran Times star whose
job it is to interact with the best and the brightest
in science, academia and government. 

But Blair and Miller have more in common than you
might think. Both are in trouble for giving readers
dubious information. While Miller's alleged
improprieties are of a more subtle nature, and she
comes into this rough patch with an estimable
reputation built over the course of a long and
distinguished career, her case reveals a great deal
about the state of today's news media. What Miller
did, and the fact that her brand of journalism is
encouraged and rewarded by the powers that be, is
precisely the kind of topic that the Times's
leadership ought to air during its current semipublic
glasnost phase. In Blair's case, the only serious
damage has been to the paper's image. Miller, on the
other hand, risks playing with the kind of fire that
starts or justifies wars, gets people killed and plays
into the hands of government officials with partisan
axes to grind. 

Every morning, almost every other source of news looks
to see what the Times does, then follows its lead. On
the morning of April 21, in a front-page story from
Iraq, Miller suggested that the main reason US forces
had failed to find the much-ballyhooed Weapons of Mass
Destruction--the ostensible primary reason for the
invasion--was that they had been recently destroyed or
existed only as precursors with dual, civilian uses.
Her source? A man standing off in the distance wearing
a baseball cap, who military sources told her was an
Iraqi scientist who had told them those things. In the
same piece, she floated unsupported claims alleging
that Iraq had provided WMD aid to Syria and Al Qaeda.
In so doing, she put the Times's imprimatur on a
highly questionable formulation that was also
essential to White House political interests. '

[...] 
Print this article
E-mail this article
Write to the editors 


Research assistance by Petra Bartosiewicz.

Read James Carey's June 16 Nation editorial for more
on problems at the New York Times. 
robably the most instructive exercise in assessing
Miller's reporting is to compare her with the Post's
Barton Gellman. You would think the two were in
different countries, if not on different planets.
After Miller's "baseball cap" piece appeared, Gellman
wrote an article that politely dismissed her scoop:
"Without further details of the find, experts said,
its significance cannot be assessed." Here are typical
Miller headlines from May: 


May 21: "U.S. Analysts Link Iraq Labs to Germ Arms" 

May 12: "Radioactive Material Found at a Test Site
Near Baghdad" 

May 11: "Trailer Is a Mobile Lab Capable of Turning
Out Bioweapons, a Team Says" 

May 9: "G.I.'s Search, Not Alone, In the Cellar of
Secrets" 

May 8: "U.S. Aides Say Iraqi Truck Could Be a Germ-War
Lab" 



Now Gellman: 


May 18: "Odyssey of Frustration; In Search for
Weapons, Army Team Finds Vacuum Cleaners" 

May 11: "Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq;
Task Force Unable to Find Any Weapons" 

May 10: "Seven Nuclear Sites Looted; Iraqi Scientific
Files, Some Containers Missing" 

May 4: "Iraqi Nuclear Site Is Found Looted; U.S. Team
Unable to Determine Whether Deadly Materials Are
Missing" 

To be sure, Gellman's record isn't without blemishes,
but he seems to have realized early on that tying his
fortunes to the military's not-always-reliable sources
wasn't wise. The thrust of Gellman's reporting in
recent months, and his central theme, has been that no
one has confirmed that Iraq actually manufactured or
retained biological or chemical weapons after the last
ones accounted for by UN inspectors in 1998. Miller,
by contrast, either downplays this point or doesn't
highlight it sufficiently. [...] "

"Every day public opinion is the target of rewritten
history, official amnesia and outright lying, all of
which is benevolently termed "spin," as if it were no
more harmful than a ride on a merry-go-round. We know
better than what they tell us, yet hope otherwise. We
believe and doubt at the same time - it seems a
condition of political thought in a modern superstate
to be permanently of at least two minds on most
issues. Needless to say, this is of inestimable use to
those in power who wish to remain there, preferably
forever."
-Thomas Pynchon, Foreword to _1984_ 




=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.org/>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com