Times Does Duty, And So Does Judy – But It’s A Hash

Times Does Duty,
And So Does Judy–
But It’s A Hash


By Tom Scocca, Gabriel Sherman

“What kind of reporter are you?” Judith Miller asked Don Van Natta Jr. at the third-floor elevator bank of the New York Times Building.

It was Oct. 14, and Ms. Miller was meeting—and confronting—Mr. Van Natta, one of the co-workers assigned to write about her, just off the Times newsroom at the West 43rd Street headquarters. She was upset, according to a source familiar with the interchange, because Mr. Van Natta had not yet called two of her friends to discuss her case.

But Mr. Van Natta and his colleagues were grappling with the flip side of that question: What kind of reporter is Judith Miller?

And the larger one that followed from it: What kind of newspaper is The New York Times?

But, in many ways, Judith Miller is still reporting her own version of the story: “I think I understand why people are upset,” she told The Observer on Tuesday, Oct. 18.

“They’re upset about many things. They’re upset about the war in Iraq, about the Bush administration; they want to know whether they were misled into this war. They’re upset about W.M.D. coverage. But let’s try and separate out this case from these questions. I’m doing the best I can do to focus on the issue that is paramount here, and that is protecting journalists.”

That is Ms. Miller’s take on the story, but it’s probably fair to say that it’s a minority take on the saga unfolding at The Times. She’s weary—fair for a reporter who spent 85 days in jail. And she’s got to be dispirited by the lack of support she’s received from querulous co-workers within a split newspaper.