Miller's Tale: Can the reporter-or the New York Times-be trusted?

The New York Times editorial page told readers over and over again that Times reporter Judith Miller went to jail for 85 days for a noble cause-the protection of confidential sources. But to many outside observers, the principles that Miller went to jail for were far from clear, with many fundamental questions left unanswered, according to this media advisory from the non-profit press watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

Readers and media watchers were eager to hear Miller's side of the story, and to see the newspaper devote its considerable journalistic energy to investigating a crucial political story that its reporter was in the middle of: the efforts of Bush administration officials to punish a critic by leaking the covert identity of Valerie Plame Wilson to the media.

But neither the October 16 report written by a team of Times reporters, nor the accompanying first-person tale written by Miller herself, answered the questions posed by critics. In fact, those questions have only multiplied.

The first--and arguably the most important-question is how Miller came to know Valerie Wilson's identity....

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After her release from jail, Miller told CNN's Lou Dobbs (10/4/05), "I didn't want to be in jail, but I knew that the principle of confidentiality was so important that I had to, because if people can't trust us to come to us to tell us the things that government and powerful corporations don't want us to know, we're dead in the water. The public won't know. That's why I was sitting in jail. For the public's right to know."

But neither the Times or Miller has offered the public any explanation of how her conduct lives up to such lofty rhetoric, according to FAIR. In this case, Miller seems to have worked to opposite ends--to shield the public from things that a powerful government didn't want us to know.