Judy, Judy, Judy

Further proof that denial ain’t just a river in Egypt…


First, Jay Rosen tackles Sulzberger's interview with
Charlie Rose:

Realists didn't expect him suddenly to trash Judy
Miller, or admit that the Times strategy was a
huge mistake. I tuned in to see how he responded
to events that overcame his arguments. In this
sense the Rose interview was a basic test of
maturity -- and diplomacy -- for a chief executive
in a very public jam.

What he told us on Charlie Rose was (in so many
words) "You are all mistaken. There were no events
that overcame my arguments. I am not in any public
jam."

Of course, it’s not too difficult to pull off a BS spin-job
when you’re dealing with a self-absorbed, light-weight like
Rose -- who always allows his guests “to confide as little as
they wish without risking his reprimand as long as they allow
him to ask his tortured, show-off, preening questions.”

But Judy wasn’t so lucky with her interview on NPR’s
On The Media.

BOB GARFIELD: - to put the question in plain
language, Judy, were you played for a chump by these
sources, Ahmed Chalabi in particular?

JUDITH MILLER: You know, first of all [LAUGHS] I-I'm
not going to be insulted by your question, but I
think that the sources that I relied on were reliable.
They had been reliable in the past. I'm not going to
discuss who they were, though many of them were
actually identified by name in my stories. Moreover,
those stories were heavily edited. They just didn't
dance their way into the New York Times. As the
editor's note acknowledged, everybody's wrong if
your sources are wrong.

And that’s not even the best part.

You can hear the interview and read the full transcript, here.