Judy Miller's Yellow Journalism
by Dr. Habib Siddiqui
=========================================================================================
For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever
killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the
earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth
the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all
mankind.
(Quraan 5:32)
Two years ago, Jack Shafer, editor-at-large of the Slate website,
wrote, If reporters who live by their sources were obliged to die by
their sources, New York Times reporter Judith Miller would be stinking
up her family tomb right now.[1] I could not have said better. Truly,
in the 18-month run-up to the war on Iraq, if any single source of
pro-war disinformation campaign could be awarded for misleading America
into war, then it is Miller. The period was Miller Time of yellow
journalism during which she claimed that her numerous Iraqi sources
gave her detailed, sensational information about Saddam Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction. Yet after the fall of Baghdad, now into
its third year, none of those chemical, biological, and/or nuclear
weapons was to be found, despite the exasperated crisscrossing of Iraq
by Anglo-American weapons hunters. Even Miller herself accompanied the
military team and searched for those mythical WMDs; it all turned out
to be a pack of lies.[2]
It was probably William Randolph Hearst the newspaper
mogul who first popularized yellow journalism in the Americas to
spark off war hysteria.[3] In the 1890s he sent the artist Frederick
Remington to Cuba to illustrate articles on an alleged revolt against
the Spanish rule. Remington and his fellow journalists searched for
signs of revolt but could not find any. He wrote to Hearst, There is
no war, and requested to be called back. Hearst sent him a cable that
read, Please remain. You furnish the pictures, Ill furnish the war.
The rest is history! Soon the Spanish-American war was to break out in
which America discovered herself as an imperial power and conquered
Cuba and Puerto Rico.
The role of a good reporter is like that of an intelligence analyst who
digs for the truth, and not of a stenographer who simply reports what
he/she hears without verification. Regrettably, Miller has been nothing
but an eavesdropper, and if I may add, a terrible one in that. For the
War Party she performed miracles by essentially becoming its
spokeswoman. Earlier in the program, she described her role as the
conveyor of official news rather than of a skeptical reporter: My job
was not to collect information and analyze it independently as an
intelligence agency; my job was to tell readers of the New York Times
as best as I could figure out, what people inside the governments who
had very high security clearances, who were not supposed to talk to me,
were saying to one another about what they thought Iraq had and did not
have in the area of weapons of mass destruction.[4]
One wonders, where did Miller learn the art of journalism?
Unfortunately, it is not Miller alone who could take the full credit
for Yellow Journalism. As Michael Massing in his 7,000-word analysis in
the New York Review of Books "Now They Tell Us," (Feb. 26, 2004) noted,
In the period before the war, US journalists were far too reliant on
sources sympathetic to the administration. Those with dissenting
viewsand there were more than a fewwere shut out. Reflecting this,
the coverage was highly deferential to the White House. This was
especially apparent on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass
destructionthe heart of the President's case for war. Despite abundant
evidence of the administration's brazen misuse of intelligence in this
matter, the press repeatedly let officials get away with it.[5]
Miller was essentially the megaphone for disseminating Bush
administrations intelligence and in promoting its agenda on Iraq.
Indeed, she wrote the first article, entitled «Threats and Responses :
The Iraqis ; U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts», on
Saddam Hussein's WMD programme, mentioning "aluminium tubes" that could
be used for nuclear weapons. That was on September 7, just a few days
after Vice-President Cheney delivered the first speech in which he
presented Iraq as Washington's next target.[6]
Millers links with the Pentagon are not new. In 1986, she wrote
numerous articles on Libya, thus contributing to a massive
disinformation campaign on Muammar Gaddafi which was coordinated by
Admiral John Poindexter.[7] During the first U.S.-led war in the
Persian Gulf, Miller co-wrote a book with Laurie Mylroie, titled Saddam
Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf. Miller and Mylroie have both been
clients of Eleana Benador, whose PR firm has represented many leading
pro-war figures that have appeared prominently on television and in
other public venues. She has also worked closely and uncritically with
Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, in developing
her reports on Iraq.
Miller first came to my attention through her book - God has ninety
names. I did not like it. In it she displayed her pro-Israeli,
pro-Phalangist (a fascist organization) bias against the uprooted
Palestinians. She disregarded facts, and preferred quoting endless
talks to justify the marauding activities of the Israeli apartheid
government and the U.S. support of it. Israels war against civilians
was simply buried in reams of chatter. There again she exhibited her
yellow journalism. Professor Edward Said (now dead) reviewed the book,
and rightly called it symptomatic because books like these are
weapons in the contest to subordinate, beat down, compel and defeat
any Arab and Muslim resistance to U.S.-Israeli dominance.[8]
Miller talked about Jews and their suffering but failed to mention
Jewish beliefs and laws against the goyim, the rabbinical sanctioned
practices of killing, demolitions, deportations, land confiscations,
annexation, etc. [See, e.g., Book of Numbers; Joshua; Mishnah Torah;
Sanhedrin 57a, 58b; Baba Kamma 37b, 113b; Soferim 15, Rule 10; Abhodah
Zarah (26b); Zohar (I, 25a), (I, 38b, and 39a); Ialkut Simoni (245c. n.
772); Hilhoth Akum (X, 1)] She epitomized a jaundiced view of Israel
and the Occupied Territories of Palestine!
In her summary on the life of the Prophet of Islam, she did not quote
one Muslim source - none of the classical biographies of the prophet. I
wonder if Simon & Schuster, her publisher, would allow a book on Jesus
or Moses that does not make a single mention of Christian or Judaic
authority.
Millers work resembled the work of a name-dropping university student,
who begins with an anecdote and then moves to a potted history. She
cited unreliable sources that could not be verified. Her footnotes only
proved her ignorance, lamentable prejudices and failures of
comprehension.
Millers book was full of interviews with whole bunch of
self-serving rascals that were not too convincing for any objective
minded reader. Her use of phrase my friend (a few hundred times),
rather than convincing her readers, puts them off the track through
long digression that followed. And even when she managed to cite
certain names, she misidentified their religion. These lapses in her
account would not have been so bad if she was not bent on revealing her
intimacy with those individuals.
After reading her book, I wondered why she truly wrote
that book? After all, she admitted that she disliked all the Arab
countries for one reason or another. She did not mention a single thing
she loved about the people she wrote about. She seldom had a good word
for the hospitality she was rendered by the few who invited her to
their homes. Her book was a pathetic display of a deeply partisan
journalist, a hostile individual, who did not and could not communicate
with the people she wrote about the common mass, listen to their
conversation, read their books, listen to their music. In summary, I
found her to be a shallow and highly opinionated journalist whose
voluminous work was unnecessarily too long and short on facts,
analysis, structure and reflection.
So, am I surprised that Miller is now serving her time in jail? No, I
am not. She is no martyr to the First Amendment. She had it coming for
her years of eavesdropping journalism.
In August 2004, Miller was subpoenaed by a Washington grand jury
investigating the leaking to Robert Novak and other journalists that
Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was an
undercover CIA officer.[9] In October 2004, U.S. District Judge Thomas
Hogan found Miller in contempt for refusing to provide evidence to a
grand jury on who leaked the name of Plame to Novak last year. Hogan
sentenced Miller to 18 months imprisonment but she remained free until
an appeal was heard. Her appeal to the Supreme Court was unsuccessful.
In July 2005, after the Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper agreed to
testify about his sources, Miller was jailed for the duration of the
grand jury investigation.[10] The Washington Post is now reporting that
the source Miller is trying to protect is I. Lewis Scooter Libby,
the chief of staff to vice president Dick Cheney.[11] [Libby, as one
may recall, is at the center of neoconservative seat of power in
Washington D.C.]
No matter, how little the punishment is Special Counsel Patrick
Fitzgerald should be applauded for going after people like Judith
Miller. I wish Fitzgerald would be able to convict the vicious
white-collar cabal who practiced the politics of fear to fluff up war
hysteria, and is now trying to cover up its crimes against humanity.
After almost a month in jail, Miller says she would like nothing better
than to get outdoors. She is lucky that one day she would walk free. I
only hope that in her prison cell, she would have the time to reflect
upon the harm that her yellow journalism has brought about to the tens
of thousands of Iraqi civilians who had lost their lives, their homes,
and their family members. Will she have the moral courage one day to
beg forgiveness for her crimes against these Iraqis? How about to the
1800 families (and still counting) of the dead U.S. soldiers?
August 9, 2005
[1] http://slate.msn.com/id/2086110/
[2]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28385-2003Jun24?language=printer
[3] Justin Raimondo, Judith Miller: Hearsted on Her Own Petard,
www.antiwar.com (July 18, 2005).
[4] As cited by Shafer in http://slate.msn.com/id/2095394
[5] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=16922
[6] http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html.
[7]Bob Woodward has written a major article in the Washington Post on
this strategy.
[8] A Devil Theory of Islam, Review Article by Prof. Edward Said, The
Nation, August 12/19, 1996.
(In review of Millers work I shall paraphrase Prof. Saids
arguments, wherever applicable.)
[9]
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000611857
[10]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1684127,00.html
[11]http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/15/AR2005071502080.html;
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/011519.html
________________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Habib Siddiqui ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) lives in a suburb of Philadelphia,
USA. He is an anti-war activist.
His essays appear in a number of websites and newspapers. He has
written six books.
His book on Islamic Wisdom is now available in the United States and
Canada.
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