Another Gen Lyons Home Run

[mooseandsquirrel]

Okrent does name names, specifically Judith Miller, the flamboyant reporter who broke one WMD "exclusive" after another, became a TV celebrity and appeared regularly on PBS and CNN. Her work includes a now notorious frontpage article published Sept. 8, 2002, stating unequivocally that Saddam had launched "a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb" and quoting Bush administration officials as fearful that "the first sign of a ‘smoking gun’ . . . may be a mushroom cloud."

http://moose-and-squirrel.com/GeneLyons/GeneLyons.html

I am tired of media smoking guns firing blanks day in and day out. I am tired of the media and pols trying to scare decent people.

m&s

[Martin Eden]

1. Judith Miller: reporting "what the government thought"

Miller seems proud of her service as a conduit for government propaganda:

<<snip>>
Challenged about the flaws in her work, Miller actually told Michael Massing, writing for the New York Review of Books, that as a reporter, "my job isn’t to assess the government’s information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq’s arsenal."

No Soviet-era Pravda flunky could have put it better.

[phantom power]

2. she calls herself an "investigative" reporter

I saw a larger segment of this same quote elsewhere, and she is not only proud of herself, she still considers herself "investigative".

[benburch]

3. Hey, M&S!

Nice to see you here!