In “When Judy Met Kim,” investigative comedian Mo Rocca takes us inside the prison where Judith Miller serves time, revealing for the first time that the New York Times reporter shares a cell with rapper and hip-hop artist Lil’ Kim.
Update [2005-7-19 10:44:14 by susanhu]: Not only that, E&P has learned that prison food doesn’t agree with Judy’s tummy! More on that below the fold.
You all know that Miller was jailed for refusing to name a source. Lil’ Kim was jailed “for lying to a grand jury about her knowledge of a shooting incident outside a Manhattan radio station,” reports Rocca.
Read Rocca’s exclusive transcript of their meeting, their conversations, the danger both women face when Judy “has been watching her favorite TV show, CNN’s Newsnight with Aaron Brown,” but “[t]he other women want to watch Bravo’s Being Bobby Brown.” Learn about the greatest danger the women face from their prison guard: “If Judy lets her source slip, [the guard – name withheld here*] will be listening – and it’ll be curtains for Judy.”
Meanwhile, FAIR has issued a media advisory on Judith Miller: “Defending Miller’s Indefensible Choice — Her supporters point to principles her silence undermines.” MORE BELOW:
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*Read Rocca’s account to learn the guard’s identity. It’s the key to Plamegate.
Jail food is giving Judy’s tummy fits, reports Editor & Publisher:
[Ms. Miller] is enduring stomach problems from jail food. She is also sharing a cell unit that had originally been designed to house just one person. Because of that, Miller had been forced to sleep on a mattress on the floor for a few days but now has her own bed.
“It has definitely dawned on her that this is really in jail — it is certainly no summer camp,” Times Executive Editor Bill Keller told E&P Monday. “The food has not agreed with her and we have been trying to impress on her that she needs to eat. We have been hammering that in.”
From the conclusion of FAIR’s media advisory:
Robert Kuttner, editor of the American Prospect, has been sharply critical of the special prosecutor’s efforts to force Miller to testify. In the July 13 Boston Globe, however, he wrote a soul-searching apology, saying that the line he and others had been taking on the case was profoundly misguided:
In the Alice in Wonderland world of the Plame-Rove story, Judith Miller, who worked hand in glove with the Bush administration to publish bogus stories about Saddam Hussein’s alleged nuclear program, is a hero—for going to jail to protect, once again, her friends in the administration. And Time-Warner, which turned over Matt Cooper’s notes (for the wrong reasons—Time-Warner‘s corporate interests—but that’s another story) is the villain. Yet it may be Cooper’s testimony that finally sinks Rove. So who’s the hero and what’s the public interest?…
It’s one thing for reporters to protect a brave whistle-blower who has taken personal risks to serve the public interest. It is another thing for reporters to collude with the powerful to punish the whistle-blower, in this case Joseph Wilson, and his wife, an innocent bystander.
Is the public good served by helping Fitzgerald learn who at the White House broke the law? Or is it served by having reporters protect Karl Rove? We need a public interest test, not an absolute privilege.
Kuttner’s willingness to rethink his instinctual reaction to a case that brings up profound emotions for journalists is commendable. It’s to be hoped that others putting forth a blanket defense of Miller’s refusal to provide testimony will do some similar reevaluation.
Note: FAIR is the acronym for the group, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. FAIR is a national media watch group, and ” been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986.”
Emphases are mine. The fantasies are Rocca’s.
