Foreword: representation, truth, fiction & etc.

[Michael Joseph]

Thanks for passing this piece along, Doug!

On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, pynchonoid wrote:

> <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/>
>
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