[Media]

Confessions at the Times - Times Edition.

As a companion piece, the New York Times also offers its own confessional--a more honest, less conflicted account of what happened during the aftermath of the paper's shoddy Iraq reporting and subsequent trouble with the Plame Affair. In it, writers Don Vann Natta, Adam Liptak, and Clifford Levy offer an entirely different Judith Miller than Judith herself offered (see post below).

The portrait the article paints of the paper is one twice compromised--first by the poor reporting of a reporter who was so beyond accountability that she named herself "Miss Run Amok," and second by its own conflicted stance in trying to simultaneously protect her and still cover the stories she was increasingly at the center of. The article lays out, in perhaps a more comprehensive account than any other paper could give, how the various threads played out over the past three years.

In a wistful postlude to the entire debacle (which even the Times now must admit it was), the paper's managing editor Bill Keller submits:

"It's too early to judge it, and it's probably for other people to judge," said Mr. Keller, the executive editor. "I hope that people will remember that this institution stood behind a reporter, and the principle, when it wasn't easy to do that, or popular to do that."

There is an irony to the piece: in it, the Times seems to finally wash its hands of Judy Miller--or at least offer her the honest investigation rather than kneejerk support she deserves--much as Miller seemed to wash her hands of Scooter Libby in her piece. The main criticism they level at themselves is the failure to provide serious journalism because of the compromises Miller put them in position to make. Miller was never accountable to her editors, her editors didn't know what she was doing, and even until just recently, even the ardent support at the top was blind support. In backing Miller, the Times seems to have recognized that it abandoned its own mission. They gussied it up as a grand moral battle--the First Amendment vs. government power--but it looks like they knew this was wishful thinking. And for that, it will be difficult for people to "remember" that the principle came before everything else. But this article is a decent first step toward rectifying things.