Middlebury audience hears N.Y. Times editor's version
Toolbox
By BRENDAN McKENNA Herald Staff - Published: October 19, 2005
MIDDLEBURY — Middlebury College students pulled extra desks and chairs into Twilight Hall Monday night, the room overflowing with the audience there to listen to Jill Abramson, managing editor of the New York Times.
Abramson spoke on the dangers posed to the public by what she called an increasing assault on the freedom of the press at the college's annual Robert W. van de Velde Jr. Memorial Lecture.
Citing a list of important stories from Watergate and the Pentagon Papers to revelations about Enron and Abu Ghraib, Abramson highlighted the importance of confidential sources in bringing important information to light.
However, Abramson said, increasingly prosecutors appear more willing to subpoena reporters and publisher to force them to reveal the sources for their stories.
"This is an important moment when the assault on journalism has reached a new high-water mark," she said.
Abramson spoke the day after the Times published a two-page look at reporter Judith Miller's involvement in the leak of the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to journalists, possibly in retaliation for her husband Joseph Wilson IV's criticism of the Bush Administration's use of intelligence in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.
The Times editor defended the paper's decision to stand behind Miller as she went to jail to protect the identity of her source, who has since been revealed as I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
"The Times believed if she identified her confidential source to the prosecutor, no source in the future would have full confidence in our word," Abramson said, going on to note that the situation surrounding Miller's jailing was indeed gray. "(But) the next time it might be a brave government whistleblower like the source for the Pentagon Papers."
"This assault on journalism and the erosion of source confidentiality does more damage to the rights of the American public than one jailed reporter," she said.
Abramson, who was an investigative reporter in Washington, D.C., for the Wall Street Journal before becoming the Times' Washington bureau chief, also reminded the audience that in many cases journalists write the first drafts of history because historians must often wait 20 or 50 years for official documents to be declassified. She also holds a degree in history and literature from Harvard University.
Though Abramson stressed the broader theme of the assault on the press, her audience focused to a great extent on Miller: her decision to go to jail to protect a source and Miller's reporting on weapons of mass destruction, which Abramson conceded was flawed.
One audience member asked Abramson if she felt that Miller was being "entirely forthright" in her account of events and her testimony to Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the leak.
Miller wrote in the times "On one page of my interview notes, for example, I wrote the name 'Valerie Flame.' Yet as I told Mr. Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where that came from, when I wrote it or why the name was misspelled." She also wrote later in the article that "I testified that I recalled recommending to editors that we pursue a story."
Abramson said she would "have to be a mind reader" to know more than what Miller had written, but said that Miller's memory was wrong in at least one instance.
"If you asked me about an obscure story I wrote in 1988, it's likely I would remember who gave me a juicy point," Abramson said. "(But) she was in Washington at the time and I was the only editor she would have been talking about. I have every reason to believe she was talking about me. … At no point did she propose a story about Joe Wilson and his wife."
Asked to clarify that point after the lecture, Abramson said she had not meant to suggest that Miller was lying.
"I've a really good memory. I'm not suggesting I believe Judy is being untruthful," Abramson said. "If she says she can't remember, I believe (her)."
It was clear that many of Abramson's questioners were disappointed with the Times and Miller over reporting on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and confused by the current controversy.
Abramson both apologized to the readers who felt betrayed and pointed to the accomplishments of the Times in response.
The American public would not have learned of the "woeful and pathetic" lack of armor, for vehicles and troops in Iraq, had it not been for the investigative reporters of the Times, she said.
"We are the only (media) organization that got a reporter into Zimbabwe," she said. "We have a huge bureau in Baghdad of reporters working in incredibly dangerous conditions."
To the amusement of the audience, Abramson said she would be "happy also to take non-Judy Miller questions, Supreme Court questions, questions on the vote in Iraq or the hurricane."
She concluded her remarks with a hopeful message about the dedication she holds and that is held by the Times.
"Journalism, revealing the truth, serving the public: What better mission could there be?" she asked.
Contact Brendan McKenna at brendan.mckenna@rutlandherald.com.
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