Miller unraveling

In case anyone wasn't sure, we have now learned in the last few days that Judith Miller was indeed a farce. Haha. It turns out she was sitting in jail, making a 'stand' or whatever, when in fact all along she could have accepted essentially the same deal as Matt Cooper did, and which she now has. Even the Times' front pager on Saturday went so far as to say that "three recent letters from people involved in the case debate whether a similar deal may have been available for some time and raise questions about why Ms. Miller decided to testify now."

The coverage in the last few days has been surprisingly decent; much of the media has, if sometimes hesitantly, pointed out that she was a sham. Criticizing her -- which had been so verboten -- is now ok.

Says Howard Kurtz in his Saturday column: "Even some Miller supporters concede that the journalists involved are seen as protecting presidential aides who may have been retaliating against Plame's husband, a White House critic on the weapons controversy, rather than shielding whistle-blowers who were exposing corruption."

Well said. But it's amazing that only now are people starting to get this.

The New York Times editorial page finally admitted the same idea on Saturday: "The case that enveloped Ms. Miller was not a situation in which a whistleblower came forth, under promises of anonymity, to offer information that would protect the public from wrongdoing."

But ultimately they still defend her: "When a journalist guarantees confidentiality, it means that he or she is willing to go to jail rather than disclose the source's identity. We also believe it means that the journalist will not try to coerce the source into granting a waiver to that promise - even if her back is against the wall. If Ms. Miller's source had wanted to release her from her promise, he could have held a press conference and identified himself. And obviously, he could have picked up the phone. Ms. Miller believed - and we agree - that it was not her place to try to hound him into telling her that she did not need to keep her promise."

Dan Froomkin summed-up the ridiculousness of it all well, in Friday's column: "Note to reporters: There is nothing intrinsically noble about keeping your sources' secrets. Your job, in fact, is to expose them. And if a very senior government official, after telling you something in confidence, then tells you that you don't have to keep it secret anymore, the proper response is "Hooray, now I can tell the world" -- not "Sorry, that's not good enough for me, I need that in triplicate." And if you're going to go to jail invoking important, time-honored journalistic principles, make sure those principles really apply."