via Atrios
At a benefit dinner for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Al Franken had this to say to Judith Miller:
Then he turned toward The New York Times table in the front of the room, where sat Judith Miller, best known these days for two things: her articles on weapons of mass destruction that didn’t quite pan out and the possibility she will go to jail for not revealing sources in the Valerie Plame case. “Judy,”” Franken said, “maybe you can find some WMD in your cell.” Silence. “OK, I shouldn’t have told that joke.”
Maybe not the best forum for such a statement, as the Committee works to promote shield laws that protect reporters from being forced to reveal sources. I can certainly agree with the sentiment though.
More Franken:
There were some humorous moments in the presentations, but the evening’s least successful joke was delivered by Al Franken, who made the final award presentation, to Ivins. He opened with a funny bit claiming that Dan Rather had told him a great story about Ivins during the cocktail hour that would make a perfect anecdote for his introduction. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to confirm it, and there’s just one source, so I can’t use it,” he said to laughter. “Too bad; it’s a good story.”
Apparently the reporters think its okay to laugh when the career of one of their own is destroyed by a mysterious forgery that was largely accurate. But make a joke about one of them irresponsibly propping up the argument for a criminal war, whoa, that’s poor taste. This is what’s wrong with our media, when they circle the wagons to protect one of their own for a dubious cause.
[Attorney Floyd]Abrams spoke seriously about the currently pending threats to journalistic freedoms, citing John Peter Zenger and Benjamin Franklin. He also addressed the recent Newsweek-Koran story. “The idea that we must in the future draft our articles to not offend fundamentalist fanatics seems to me utterly inconsistent with living in free society,” he said.
I wonder which fundamentalist fanatics to whom Abrams was referring?
to do an investigation of Safire, Krauthammer, Miller and a few others. I believe they were paid by military intelligence, and that they were given scripts to follow.
Not that that is illegal or unprecedented. But it is unethical from a journalism perspective.
Don’t forget the douchebag Novak.
but he was against the war, so he wasn’t accepting checks.
Novak doing something ethical.
When the Armstrong Williams case came out, it was a revelation to me. I thought, hey, these MS reporters aren’t stupid — they’re being paid to shoot this shit! And isn’t it illegal? Aren’t there laws about government domestic propaganda campaigns? Not that anyone will be prosecuted by the current AG but the statute of limitations runs seven years on federal felonies, yes?
I get such a creepy feeling from these neocon/theocrats. They really don’t plan on ever being out of power…
it might be illegal, depending on how they handle it.
So the crowd didn’t like Franken’s double-hitter.
It was too dark for a laugh but I’m glad he said
it. Judith Miller has yet to apologize for war
pimping although her own Newspaper made an effort.
I agree. We MUST start saying these things in “polite company.” I’ve taken to sending stuff about the Downing Street Memo to my more conservative friends and family (at least the ones I can remotely even communicate with about such things), let the chips fall where they may. The stakes are too high right now to worry about some stepping on toes or damaging peoples’ delicate sensibilities.
I never miss a chance to bring Miller up, whatever kind of company I find myself in. And I make sure to include at least a “PS” denouncing her every time I write The Times (which, pathetically, is way too often — [b]as if[/b] they would ever publish letters as reality-based as mine tend to be!).
I actually brought Judith Miller up to some friends of mine who work at the Times and they were almost shocked I would say such a thing. Fuck it. They need to know that people are paying attention to this, and that people they may know are capable of doing very bad things.
the in your jail cell part of Franken’s Miller joke that turned the audience off, not the reference to WMD. There’s a very real chance that she could wind up locked up for standing up for the rights of journalists all over the country. I’m sure that weighs more heavily on a room full of reporters than her lack of integrity on the Iraq issue does.
with the ethics of Miller and anyone else who knows the source of the Plame leak. I don’t find it ethical to protect the commission of treason, especially when that treason actually exposes us and the rest of the world to more danger by decreasing the monitoring of nuclear black markets.
I agree. This journalistic tenet is meant to allow people who are afraid of recrimination to be able to come forward without fear of sanctions. It is NOT meant to allow people in power to peddle propaganda and lies. The lines do become blurry when you look at what-ifs and theoretical scenarios, but these people KNOW WHO OUTED PLAME – a could-be act of actual treason. Just who exactly are they trying to protect? It’s not like it was a whistleblower who outed Plame. We accept this ruse of an excuse, yet someone like Sibel Edmonds can not tell her story – even as an anonymous source, or so I guess since I think she knows much more than we’ve heard.
“It is NOT meant to allow people in power to peddle propaganda and lies.”
Do you want the government and the courts to oversee this? It is, IMO, for editors and publishers to oversee.
Judith Miller printed a pack of lies, but where were her editors and publishers to grill her?
And just because we’re furious with her reporting is no reason to throw the freedom of the press out the window.
Or was he in favor of the war for a variety of reasons and went along with the WMD thing for the sake of convenience… or ‘the greater good’..or whatever.
I respond to Franken the way most of the people posting here do. But then he does something like tackle the insane thug at the Clark rally & I think he’s great all over again.
If there’s one thing that annoys/hounds me, it’s the all-too-frequent conflict between the need for team spirit, loyalty, speaking with one voice & the cantankerous urge to have my critical say, no matter what.
Yes, yes, proportion and discrimination are the guidelines. Timing, discernment, all that. In order to avoid becoming what we’re fighting against.
And yet, and yet, what colossally bad taste Franken showed, and, in the court of public opinion (or of courting public opinion-makers) how much damage was done.
No. I don’t want it to be up to the courts. It should be up to the conscience of each journalist, but with Judith Miller we know what little that is worth. One of the journalists that knows who was fishing to out Plame should step forward and tell the investigators who it was. It’s their moral choice. The fact that they choose to allow this criminal to stand behind their journalistic ethics speaks to their own morals.
This is my problem with Franken. Even when he is correct, he comes across as a jerk. Did he really think THAT audience would think THAT joke was funny? Regardless, if you are not more clever than that, you shouldn’t be speaking at dinners.
The Dan Rather joke was rather lame, as well, not to mention there is nothing particularly humorous about a guy losing his job because he was sucker punched by someone laying in wait.
Franken may have the correct values/take on a given issue, and I applaud him dedicating time to fight the man but I don’t find him funny; to the contrary he is obnoxious.
Okay, I shouldn’t have made that statement.
I mostly agree. I grew weary of his radio show and stopped listening. I don’t like his joke about Judith Miller because it’s never funny to send someone to jail, especially a reporter protecting his/her source. I also grew weary of the scatalogical humor and the repetitiveness of the material for his attacks on Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.
However, I do think he’s quite smart and passionate about politics. I still can’t quite get over his support for the war in Iraq and his belief that Colin Powell’s testimony before the U.N. was true. Lord.
is that The Times seems to have assigned Miller to the Oil-for-Food story. Of course a pro like Miller will have no trouble being objective on this story, even though the whole “scandal” seems to be based on documents forged by her good buddy Chalabi.
On second thought, Franken can be forgiven for not finding humor in this. It really isn’t funny.
Haven’t there been past (and probably present) cases of journalists actually working with the government? Not just CIA agents pretending to be journalists.
Oh, and added to this is that (very small and barely noticed) story of the government hiring journalists to put out that Bosnian (I think.. or Serbian or something) “news” website, that was fully US government funded and run, but you only knew that if you clicked the itsy bitsy, almost buried link.
I think possibly the media is slowly waking up to the danger they are in, and realizing that no matter how much they suck up to power, unless they become completely subverted to it, they are targeted for destruction by this crew.