All The Blame That's Fit To Print

There’s no shortage of schadenfreude being experienced over The New York Times’ problems. Those with one bone or another to pick with Judy Miller, bloggers who chant the mantra of MSM demise and critics of the war in Iraq are just a few who are reveling in the now-very public internal fighting at the paper.

I say good for The Times.

Not praise for the mess they find themselves in, surely. Miller’s pre-war stories about weapons of mass destruction, the paper’s apology for them, not to mention Miller’s still-curious role in the Valerie Plame case are among the things the Times’ has been suffering from for some time, and will continue to haunt them in the foreseeable future. And while Miller’s attorney, Robert Bennett, may be right about old scores being settled, at least we’re seeing a public airing of it all.

The Times’ lengthy reporting on Miller and her involvement with the grand jury, and her own first-person account last week, led to this weekend’s burst of discussion. Not all of it pretty, but out there for everyone to see. What kicked off this round was a memo to the paper’s staff from Executive Editor Bill Keller, who apologized for not taking up the issue of the WMD reporting earlier, writing:

“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. If we had lanced the WMD boil earlier, we might have damped any suspicion that THIS time, the paper was putting the defense of a reporter above the duty to its readers.”

Then, the Times’ Public Editor, Byron Calame weighed in with a blistering rebuke of Miller’s account of the Plame case, concluding:

“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.”

Columnist Maureen Dowd concurred with Calame, noting in her column:

“Judy told The Times that she plans to write a book and intends to return to the newsroom, hoping to cover ‘the same thing I've always covered - threats to our country.’ If that were to happen, the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands.”

This morning, Calame posts Miller’s response on his Web Journal, in which she takes issue with many of Calame’s conclusions and noting,

“You never bothered to mention in your essay my decision to spend 85 days in jail to honor the pledge I made. I’m saddened that you, like so many others, have blurred the core issue of that stand and I am stunned that you refused to post my answers to issues we had discussed on your web site at the critical moment that Times readers were forming their opinions.”

Those who like a good fight will love watching this one continue to unfold. One of the major changes that came to the Times in the aftermath of the Jason Blair fiasco was the Public Editor, a decision that all-but guarantees the type of public airing we’re now witnessing, from the top on down. (Ironically, some of this “public” discussion will cost you $50 a year to see, but that’s a topic for another time.)

While those enjoying this show might want to focus on the paper’s inability to learn from past mistakes, it seems to me they have learned how to handle the fallout a little more publicly and honestly. I’m here to tell you that that’s not easy.