All Blog Posts from Public Eye

Why was former jailbird Judith Miller yukking it up earlier this week with “Fox and Friends” – defending the Harry Potter leaker, no less – and beaming this Tuesday on “Hardball” as she discussed terror risks?

You would be feeling fine, too, if you found out you were going to be portrayed by Kate Beckinsale on the big screen.

Yep, that’s right. The “Pearl Harbor” beauty and “Evolution” buttkicker is coming to DC. According to Variety, a new movie is ramping up with a very familiar plot.

Rod Lurie will next direct his script "Nothing but the Truth," a drama about a D.C.-based female newspaper reporter who outs a CIA agent and is imprisoned for refusing to reveal her source.

Cast is mobilizing for an October production start. Talks are under way for Kate Beckinsale to play the journalist, Matt Dillon the prosecutor, Vera Farmiga the CIA agent, Edie Falco (in her first role since "The Sopranos") the editor of the newspaper that published the story and Alan Alda the attorney who tries to free the reporter from jail.

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The Internet: So Hot Right Now: In case you haven't heard, new media is being taken very seriously in campaign 2008. AdWeek speaks to some campaign media folk who spell out just how seriously: "This part of the campaign is no longer going to be the ugly stepsister," said John McCain's media director. But that doesn't mean old media is entirely getting the shaft. One former Hillary Clinton Senate campaign staffer said television is still very much in the game: "It is still a TV business. TV still puts the politician in front of people, and their personality and image are more controllable. That is the advantage over all other media."

Going All 'SAO' On The Press: You might have thought there was some kind of official standard set by reporters in referring to an anonymous source as a "senior administration official." You'd be wrong. As The Politico's Mike Allen writes in his explainer on the origins, uses and abuses of the term, "the answer to how someone gets to be a senior official is: It depends." And from whence did this overused term come? Allen taps CBS News' Bob Schieffer, who said it evolved from "senior American official," a term used to describe those close to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s:

"'Senior American official' would say things that Henry Kissinger couldn't be quoted on, but he laid out what was happening and what the other side was going to have to do and other things that would have been awkward if Kissinger had been quoted as saying them. It sort of ballooned, and then you'd get back to Washington and you'd wind up with 100 people in a room and you'd have some official come in and brief as a 'senior administration official.' It's been abused for a long, long time."

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The Skinny Today: The Senate heads for a showdown. It's Miller time in a D.C. courthouse and Stonehenge gets a new discovery. The Skinny is Hillary Profita's take on the top of the news and the best of the Web.

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Has anyone else had it with all these columns condemning Bode Miller and calling him "the biggest bust in Olympic history?" There hasn't been a media feeding frenzy like this since the "summer of the shark." And this one is all too ironic: Bode has gotten a bad rap from the press in large part because he "was very cooperative, open, and candid" with reporters, as Cathy Olian, who produced the "60 Minutes" "wasted" piece that started all the hand wringing, told me in January. The public flogging of Miller is a testament to how the media, against its own best interests, lauds athletes who hide their real personalities behind media savvy and public relations while punishing those willing to offer a legitimate glimpse into who they are. Want proof? Consider Michelle Kwan, the anti-Bode. And that's not meant as a compliment.

Kwan, like Miller, was not an Olympic success story. Despite being the best figure skater in the world, she was unable to win the gold in a sport in which reputation can go along way with the judges. But Kwan was never lambasted as a loser – she has been, in fact, one of the press' all time Olympic darlings. "Michelle Kwan is sports’ ultimate class act," wrote Newsweek. "And when she withdrew from the U.S. Olympic team Sunday, there were plenty of tears to go around." Not from Slate's Seth Stevenson, who noticed a moment that to me represents all things Kwan: "Did you catch that moment during the opening ceremonies when she looked kind of bored … but then noticed the camera trained on her and suddenly flashed a look of awe and thrilled-to-be-here-ness?" Kwan has always seemed acutely aware of her public persona in a way that's made it difficult to get any real sense of the real person beneath the platitudes. And for that – for essentially presenting a portrait of the figure skater as noble, two-dimensional cartoon character – the press, which is ostensibly interested in reality, has lionized her.

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Last week’s “60 Minutes” profile of Olympic skier Bode Miller and the controversy that followed concerning Miller’s comments about his drinking habits (for which he later apologized) doesn’t seem to have put the brakes on his media celebrity. In fact, the flap seems to have had the opposite effect (shockingly enough.) He’s on the cover of both Time and Newsweek this week – both of which highlight Miller’s “rebel” status: “Say hello to skiing’s wild child,” says Time. “On a pair of skis, no one in the world is more dazzling to watch. Once they come off and he opens his mouth? That's when Bode Miller starts to get really interesting,” teases Newsweek -- but not without readily admitting why Miller continues to make reporters drool:

He has a smirking disrespect for the media, a stance he'll repeat until your recorder runs out of tape. As far as he's concerned, the only stupid questions from reporters are the ones that end in question marks. But he'll answer anything—anything—and the moment he opens his mouth, he's an ink-spiller's fantasy.

How Miller’s wild ways will fare on the slopes is anyone’s guess, but in MediaLand, a little controversy never hurt.

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On Sunday, "60 Minutes" ran a profile of skier Bode Miller. The profile showed Miller's childhood home, discussed his unorthodox style, and gave Miller the opportunity to share some of his concerns about the price of success. "The piece was awesome," said Lowell Taub, Miller's agent in New York. "It showed [Miller] is charismatic and intelligent and likeable and something that we as Americans can be proud of."



Less awesome, however, were the revelations featured in the "60 Minutes" press release about the story, at least as far as many in the skiing community are concerned. Last Thursday, the show sent out a press release headlined "60 Minutes: World Cup ski champ admits to being drunk on slopes," which begins like this:

When he competes for Olympic gold medals in Turin next month, count on World Cup champion Bode Miller to be sober because, as he tells Bob Simon, skiing drunk is too hard. He ought to know. He says he's done it before and won't promise not to do it again.

Was the release accurate? It sure looks that way. The piece shows Miller prepping for a race in Switzerland the day after winning the world cup. "He wasn't as much hungover as still drunk," says Simon in voiceover. Miller had been celebrating his world cup win the night before with friends. "Talk about a hard challenge, right there. If you've ever tried to ski wasted, it's not easy," Miller says. (Miller is disputing the drinking-related portion of the story – kind of – here. He acknowleges having been out "partying super late" for the 10:00am start, but writes that he's "never drunk alcohol within hours of racing.")



Accuracy notwithstanding, however, critics like Taub are charging "60" with putting out a press release that was sensationalistic. Sports Illustrated's Tim Layden made his feelings known in a piece headlined "60 Minutes' shameful ratings grab."

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For most ordinary folks – by “ordinary,” I mean non-journalists – it must be seem like an obvious point when they hear someone complaining about the way the media treats individuals. Who hasn’t felt a wave of revulsion when they see some local reporter shove a microphone in the face of a man or woman and asking something like, “You’ve just lost your entire family in this fire, how does that make you feel?” Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but not a real big one.



The press also gets beaten on by anyone who’s been caught in a “feeding frenzy.” One day you’re out jogging by yourself and decide to skip town before your wedding, a few days later you can’t walk by a window in your own home without some photographer’s telephoto lens capturing your silhouette through your drawn shades. Anyone who’s driven by the site of a news event knows that entire villages pop up, sometimes complete with satellite trucks, trailers and vendors.



In short, the media can be pretty obnoxious, rude and disruptive when given a chance, and a big enough story. Nobody knows this better than the people in the press themselves which is why it’s always a little surprising to hear the same type of complaints coming from them. But it seems that almost every time their own turn on them, a journalist pulls out the old card about an out-of-control media.

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Judith Miller, high profile reporter for the New York Times and central figure in the investigation of the Valerie Plame leak and indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby has retired, effective immediately the paper has announced. In a statement, New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said, “We are grateful to Judy for her significant personal sacrifice to defend an important journalistic principle. I respect her decision to retire from The Times and wish her well.”



Times Executive Editor Bill Keller added, “In her 28 years at The Times, Judy has participated in some great, prize-winning journalism. She displayed fierce determination and personal courage both in pursuit of the news and in resisting assaults on the freedom of news organizations to report. She carries our best wishes into the next phase of her career.”



Are we just self-centered or is it ironic that Miller’s retirement comes on the day Mary Mapes kicked off her book tour?

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Today’s Wall Street Journal (free online this week) looks at the roles three prominent journalists are likely to play in the eventual trial of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine have been the media community’s faces throughout this story up until now but NBC’s Tim Russert is emerging as an important player. And he’s increasingly getting heat from bloggers about it, even as other players remain in the spotlight.

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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.

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