Kicking the Journalist

Miller is a blip to soured public
“Ask some experts why the public seems uninterested in the mounting criticism of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, and their answer is simple: People already have a low opinion of the media's credibility.” St. Petersburg Times, FL 

As an avid ‘(print) media watcher’ I feel a touch defensive of journalists, as a group. Mind you, I would never rely on the US news sources alone. The system of ‘partisan’ media is known elsewhere, but no where as ubiquitous as the US.
The real point is, at its very best, media reporting is subjective. My first job as a media stringer came with just one concrete rule; ‘you do not make news, or comment on news. You report the facts!”
Still, it didn’t take long to find, with a few pages of notes and a strict word limit, the journalist must pick which ‘facts’ will go into the story. Even subconsciously, the most upright reporter can skew a story with that choice of facts for inclusion.

But don’t shoot the messenger! And don’t simply rely on one source for vital information.
So Miller was probably in bed with the administration. Surely the trick of following the media is to understand the leanings of writers and their publications.
I find it difficult to believe that the American media didn’t know that ‘embedded journalists’, during the Iraq war, were propagandists for Bush’s regime. I guess, in the lottery to select participants, it might have bad form for the losers to say too much. But they are allowed to think.
One of the issues discussed, at least in media outside the US, was the difficulty of living with troops and still giving unbiased reports. Far from criticism it was a look at the reality of the system the US Government adopted for news coverage of the war.
In some ways the ‘embedded’ system worked against the Government, who wanted to control the news. Let’s face it, stuck in terrible conditions with a bunch of grunts for days on end, you would tend to share the sentiments of your fellow sufferers.
Yes, the journalists were restrained by their signed agreement with the government. That cannot stop stories being skewed, to some extent at least.
As to Miller, well the NYT is just one of many publications out there. Miller might well have been a propagandist, but the news reports were not significantly different from others around the country.
If Americans wanted real news during the Iraq war they had to look elsewhere. If they wanted body counts, for example, or real ‘unsettling’ facts, they were not going to get them from the US media.
That is not the fault of journalists. The blame must slate back to the publishers who steer the content and position of the publications.
The concern of the publishers is their prestige and advertising revenue. It is they who will toe the line and deliver all the news the government wants. It is they who will obscure those things the government would rather people didn’t see.