by Glynn Wilson
Editor and Publisher

Americans can't handle the truth. That is clearly a fact these days, and this does not just apply to the "ignorant masses."

Our so-called leaders won't admit the truth until it lands them in jail. This includes President George W. Bush and his aide Karl Rove, and it includes Vice President Dick Cheney and his aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Watch for indictments in the next few days.

The mainstream media and the press in this country can't handle the truth - because it would put them out of business.

As Sen. Hiram W. Johnson from California reportedly said in the run-up to World War I in 1918, "The first casualty when war comes is truth."

Much earlier in our history, Samuel Johnson seems to have had the first word on the subject. He reportedly said in The Idler magazine in 1758: "Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages."

In case you don't know what credulity means, it is defined as "a disposition to believe too readily."

It is now clear, despite all the double-speak going on in New York and Washington, that New York Times correspondent Judith Miller too readily believed what she was hearing from Bush administration connected sources in 2003 on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq.

Ms. Miller got out of jail a few days ago for ostensibly protecting a source. She finally published part of her account in Sunday's New York Times. The Times also published a story about the case written by other supposedly independent reporters at the paper. (See the previous post for links).

In the wake of the story, Editor and Publisher magazine is calling for an apology from editor Bill Keller and for Miller to be fired.

Keller Should Fire Miller, Apologize to Readers

But that won't happen, because Ms. Miller is a friend and confidant of publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

As the official Times version of the story reported, when Ms. Miller was released from jail On Sept. 29, she was "whisked by Mr. Sulzberger and Mr. Keller to the Ritz-Carlton Georgetown for a massage, a manicure, a martini and a steak dinner."

I met Sulzberger once and, through a number of staff correspondents, he bought me many a steak dinner, including several while I helped the paper cover the trial of deposed HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy.

When I met him, Sulzberger was sitting in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton on Canal Street in New Orleans with a young woman who was not his wife. He made a talk at a conference in place of then-executive editor Howell Raines, who had canceled his appearance to stay in New York and direct the coverage during the first week of the Iraq war.

Raines had hired me to work for the Times as a free-lance reporter to help the Atlanta bureau cover the South after he let bureau chief Kevin Sack go to the Los Angeles Times, where he went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.

What burns me up after reading all this coverage of the Miller case is the discrepancy in how she and her story have been treated compared to how the Alabama contingent for the Times was treated.

Is there something about being from New York and going to Harvard that makes someone a better journalist? Obviously that is not true, considering all of the reports about the problems with Ms. Miller's reporting. She even called herself "Ms. Run Amok."

But she is now a celebrity journalist who will no doubt get a book deal to write about her time in jail, ala Martha Stewert, while many better reporters who were not friends of Mr. Sulzberger languish in obscurity – and American democracy is sacrificed for a de facto monarchy.

I almost called this column "If I could turn back the hands of time," after the line in the song.

Something has been eating at me since business editor Larry Ingrassia got his hands on an e-mail I wrote complaining about how the Bush Justice Department was treating the New York Times during the Scrushy trial.

The Times was the only news organization in the country that did not have press credentials to cover the trial, thanks to a decision by staff correspondent Reed Abelson not to apply for credentials in advance. She made that decision based on a conversation with Justice Department public affairs officer Edward Adams, who convinced her that the credential could be pulled if it was not used every day.

I found that decision ludicrous, so I fought it with Adams and court clerk Sharon Harris, since it would fall to me to cover the trial on a day-to-day basis. Abelson and other correspondents would fly in for a toe-touch dateline now and then and crank out a feature from their hotel rooms - based largely on my reporting.

Here's the rub. I was not backed up by any of the five editors I worked with on the case or the New York Times legal counsel. But Judith Miller, who is now vilified for sucking up to the Bush administration and contributing to the false information that led to the war in Iraq, is treated like a hero.

The paper's management backed up Ms. Miller through this entire scandal, which seems to suggest that kissing up to the Bush administration is A-OK.

They did not back me up while standing up to the Bush Justice Department, which seems to suggest a pattern.

It just goes to show you that American journalism no longer values seeking the truth and standing up to the powerful. It is all about the money and the celebrity - and to hell with the rest of us little people who still do our best to believe in American values and stand up for the ideals of democracy.

And that pisses me off. If it pisses you off, support independent press outlets like this one and show the bastards in New York that they are not the only people on the planet who have what it takes to practice this thing called journalism.