New York Times executive editor Bill Keller sent a memo to staff about the handling of the Judith Miller affair. He admits to making some mistakes:
…These are instances, when viewed with the clarity of hindsight, where
the mistakes carry lessons beyond the peculiar circumstances of this
case.
I wish we had dealt with the controversy over our coverage of WMD as
soon as I became executive editor. At the time, we thought we had
compelling reasons for kicking the issue down the road. The paper had
just been through a major trauma, the Jayson Blair episode, and needed
to regain its equilibrium.
…By waiting a year to own up to our mistakes, we allowed the anger
inside and outside the paper to fester. Worse, we fear, we fostered an
impression that The Times put a higher premium on protecting its
reporters than on coming clean with its readers.
…I wish that when I learned Judy Miller had been subpoenaed as a witness
in the leak investigation, I had sat her down for a thorough
debriefing, and followed up with some reporting of my own.
No one thinks that this issue has been put to bed, so it’s good that Keller is willing to continue to discussion. (Editor & Publisher has a good round-up piece.)More importantly, he’s willing to admit some mistakes. Let’s hope that the lesson about owning up to mistakes quickly and completely has truly been learned.
Meanwhile, Judith Miller says some of Keller’s comments are "seriously inaccurate."
Public editor Byron Calame also weighed in on the matter. He ends his column with this sentence: "It seems to me that whatever the limits put on her, the problems facing
her inside and outside the newsroom will make it difficult for her to
return to the paper as a reporter."
Shouldn’t he be making a recommendation about whether or not the Times should hire her back?
