In 2002 and 2003, Judy Miller of the New York Times and the Fox News Channel were working different sides of the street for the same cause. Rupert Murdoch's FNC was openly rallying Americans behind a flag-waving push to invade Iraq, helping to convince millions that Saddam Hussein must have had something to do with 9/11, But the Times' Miller was really a more valuable cog in the push for the war, helping to rally the Beltway elite behind hysterical stories about aluminum tubes and non-existent WMDs.
Ultimately, the controversy over Miller's bogus journalism forced her out at the Times -- very small justice for her important role in fomenting a war that has killed more than 4,000 Americans and countless more Iraqi civilians while driving our nation deeper into bottomless debt, with little to show for any of this.
Thus, the least surprising journalism news story ever:
Fox News is expected to announce today the hiring of a new contributor, a veteran national security correspondent who has shared a Pulitzer Prize. Her name is Judith Miller, and she is nothing if not controversial. Miller left the New York Times in 2005 after testifying in the trial of former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby that he had leaked her information about a CIA operative. Miller's conduct in the case, which led to her serving 85 days in jail for initially refusing to testify, drew rebukes from the Times executive editor and some of her colleagues. In the run-up to the Iraq war, Miller reported stories on the search for Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be untrue, some of which were cited in a Times editor's note acknowledging the flawed coverage. Miller, now with the conservative Manhattan Institute, wrote when she left the paper that she had "become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war." Miller will be an on-air analyst and will write for Fox's Web site. "She has a very impressive résumé," says Senior Vice President John Moody. "We've all had stories that didn't come out exactly as we had hoped. It's certainly something she's going to be associated with for all time, and there's not much anyone can do about that, but we want to make use of the tremendous expertise she brings on a lot of other issues. . . . She has explained herself and she has nothing to apologize for."
"We've all had stories that didn't come out exactly as we had hoped."!!!!
Have we all had stories that turned out like this?
Judy Miller and Fox News teaming up? I think those two are already bound together, for eternity.
