"All that is old and already formed can continue to live only if it allows within itself the conditions of a new beginning."
Rewarding Judy Miller:
SPJ President RespondsPosted 10:09 p.m., Nov. 09, 2005
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Kevblog Note: On Oct. 16, I published a note on the Kevblog, and subesquently sent a letter to Society of Professional Journalists President Irwin Gratz requesting that the organization--of which I am a member--suspend its plans to issue New York Times reporter Judith Miller SPJ's prestigious First Amendment award. Despite my protest, and undoubtedly the protests of a good number of other journalists, SPJ issued the award several days later. I hadn't received a response from the society, until today, when I received a message from Gratz very graciously explaining SPJ's decision to go ahead with the award.Whether you agree or disagree with its decision--I disagreed--the following note from former SPJ President Gratz at least shows that the organization put thought into its decision. And it illuminates the rationale behind that decision.
It's worth noting that Judy Miller today left her job at the New York Times after 28 years at the paper.
Kevin:
Thanks for writing about Judy Miller. Though we didn't accede to your request, I wanted you to have a full explanation of why we did what we did.
As President of the SPJ, I sat on the seven-member executive committee that acts as the awards committee for our annual "Freedom of Information" award. Our initial decision was made in mid-July, a time when Judith Miller was in jail.
But, even then I and the other members of our committee were fully aware of the totality of the situation: the questions raised (even by the Times) about Miller's reporting on Iraq and doubts about the legal strategy pursued by the New York Times (it was our own counsel, Bruce Sanford, who argued in January that Miller and Cooper's lawyers should have been trying to quash the subpoena based on the unlikelihood that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 applied to this instance). Personally, I marveled at the irony that the person or persons Miller was in jail protecting were almost surely officials of the Bush Administration who have been no friend of the press.
But Miller's defiance of the Special Prosecutor's subpoena clearly pushed a major first amendment issue for us in a way that has proved effective. Thirty-four [state] attorneys general wrote that amicus brief in June arguing to the Supreme Court for a qualified reporter's privilege for the press and a shield law has garnered more than 60 co-sponsors in the House and is moving for the first time in 30 years.
Those achievements, unchanged even by the more recent revelations by the Times, are what we made our First Amendment award for.
Of course, the professional behavior of Miller, and the Times, raise other issues. SPJ has long complained that the Washington press corps uses anonymous sourcing too cavalierly, to its detriment and the public's (a stance we repeated in a resolution at the convention last month).
But what about the legitimate question that Miller's work may have tainted her role as a proponent of our First Amendment argument for a reporter's privilege?
I believe the First Amendment requires us (via our proxies in Congress) to be tolerant in the extreme. As a result, mainstream rights often wind up being protected by very un-mainstream people.
Think of the neo-Nazis who won the right to demonstrate in Skokie. Or Larry Flynt, who won affirmation of the right to print parody. The case that won journalists the right to be largely free of libel suits filed by public officials was the result of a newspaper ad that was wrong. (Indeed, some might say another case of the lax New York Times oversight.)
SPJ's largest legal defense fund award ever went to Vanessa Leggett, a prospective book author about whom our own former "Quill" editor wrote, "I was wary to make a journalism martyr of a woman who has arguably never really done journalism. ... Leggett's only two published works were FBI manuals."
In matters regarding the First Amendment, we often don't get to pick our protagonists, or the facts. But Miller's case presented the courts with the classic request for a reporter's privilege. The courts rejected it, thus illuminating, after two years of shifting decisions, the true state of federal law on this matter and causing the political powers that be to begin working on a possible correction. This is a benefit to all journalists, even if it comes from someone whose own newspaper career may be at an end.
My term as SPJ president ended last month; there's always a possibility, that my successor may re-visit the award.
But I think it remote, in part, because of what our leaders saw transpire at our convention last month. Judy Miller received a near standing ovation at her appearance before our attendees. And our voting delegates, in a spirited debate, removed paragraphs critical of Miller from the resolution that spoke to our more general criticism of anonymous sourcing.
Reasonable people can disagree about whether we should have conditioned our First Amendment award on a wider assessment of Judy Miller's work. I, for one, don't think so, and my best evidence indicates most of the people of the Society agree.
Maine Public Broadcasting Network
immediate past president,
Society of Professional Journalists
Kevblog Note: I sent a letter back to Mr. Gratz today, responding to his note and asking for his permission to publish his letter on this Web site.
Mr. Gratz:Thanks for your thoughtful response. While I don't agree with you, I am confident that you have put a great deal of thought into the position you are taking and that you believe that the decision to reward Judith Miller with SPJ's prestigious "Freedom of Information" award was the right one. I disagree with that decision--at least in the absence of a thorough SPJ examination of facts of the case that came to light only days before the award was bestowed. I disagree. But I respect your position.
The problem is that there are a great many questions about Judith Miller and her behavior that I think should have given the SPJ pause, and perhaps caused it to have waited for another better case upon which to hinge its drive for a national press shield law. The Judith Miller case, despite its conveniently high profile, is the wrong test case for that.
Miller's case is rife with unpleasant mystery. We don't know, for instance, the answer to this bizarre question of Miller's claimed national security clearance, a clearance that she said in print had prevented her from discussing matters relevant to the American people with her newspaper's editors. Holding a security clearance is by nature a matter of keeping secrets. And there are exactly three ways for someone to gain national security clearance--either by serving in the active military, taking a civilian position within the military or the security apparatus within civilian government, or working as a contractor on behalf of the military or the government's security arms.
Miller claimed in a letter to the New York Times public editor that the matter had already been cleared up. But I see no evidence of that. It is perhaps unlikely that Judith Miller was a paid operative of the Bush Administration, but in the wake of the Armstrong Williams case and other instances of "paid propaganda" uncovered by the Government Accountability Office during Bush's tenure, it hardly seems impossible.
Further, based on several pieces of evidence, Miller exhibited an extreme level of intimacy with powerful government sources--Exhibit A being the lugubrious letter she received in prison from Lewis Libby that contained the bizarre statement about cedars' leaves turning in unison because they were joined at the root. Many believe that statement was Mafioso-like code language. I don't know what it was. But it looks very bad.
Finally, given the facts of the case, given the fact that in the end Miller did nothing other than what the prosecutor requested she do in the first place--making it all the more likely, incidentally, that I will end up in jail for doing my job because of the courage this case is likely to lend future prosecutions in cases involving media coverage--who can say why Judith Miller ever went to jail? It was a misunderstanding between attorneys? And that, even allowing that it is true, constitutes protecting a free press? Mon dieu!
It isn't just that the powerful people Miller was protecting--serving?--were no friends of the press. As Chris Matthews has been zealously documenting over the past two weeks, this is a government that used the media expertly--planting a story in the New York Times--Miller, again!--then pointing to that very story on Sunday talk shows, in an unprecedented media blitz of high-ranking officials sent out to justify the pending invasion of a foreign country. They plant the story, then point to their planted story as evidence of the justness of their cause?
In that, Mr. Gratz, Miller's coveted sources have been no friends to the American people, nor to the international community. Nor, arguably, was Miller herself.
This may sound like the ravings of a liberal partisan. But the facts don't square with that. I am, in fact, not a liberal. At best, I can be considered a centrist on political issues. But I am a journalist. And I was trained to believe that we are to serve as the watchdogs of government, not its lapdogs.
Please note that I do not accuse SPJ of playing that compliant role. I have tremendous respect for the organization, and would not consider withdrawing membership over this issue. But the jury is frankly out on Judith Miller, and as you know, my request was not about refusing her the award. It was about delaying the award until it was better known exactly what happened. I regret that SPJ chose not to do that, but instead to essentially buy what may very well be Judith Miller's cover story, possibly in order to further its own political agenda in achieving a (badly needed) national press shield law. My concern is that SPJ is doing itself more harm than good by upholding this case to justify that cause. I'm afraid, frankly, that it could backfire.
Here's hoping I'm wrong about every facet of my beliefs on this matter.
Thanks again for writing.
As an endnote: I would like to your permission to publish your response to my letter on my Web site (http://www.featherly.com). I would really appreciate it, because I have already published there the fact that I sent my original letter to you, and reported a few weeks later that I had received no response. I'd like to correct the record on that, and to publish your thoughtful letter to me as evidence that SPJ has indeed given this matter a great deal of consideration. Would that be OK? I won't publish what I think was intended as a private letter to me without your permission.
Yours,
-- Kevin Featherly
Final Note: Mr. Gratz wrote me back a final time this afternoon to let me know that in the future, SPJ plans to circulate the names of award nominees to members get their input prior to judging its Freedom of Information award so the organization "can consider any thoughts or reservations in a more timely fashion." That is welcome news.
