Some media observers call NY Times leak report insufficient

NEW YORK -- A long tell-all by reporter Judith Miller and The New York Times has done little to exonerate the newspaper for its handling of the case in which a CIA operative was exposed, media observers said yesterday, and raised new questions about journalistic ethics.

After the publication in the Times on Sunday of a 5,800-word account of the saga, some media analysts called on the influential newspaper to dismiss the reporter and others said it needs to give a fuller explanation.

Miller, who covers national security, spent 85 days in jail rather than reveal a source's name to prosecutors in the leak probe. Then a deal was worked out for her to testify before the grand jury in the case.

When she testified, Miller said she could not remember where she learned the CIA operative's name. In the published account, Miller said she ''didn't think" she was given the name by Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, who had been identified as her source.

Media critics said her explanation was hard to fathom and they criticized Times editors for what they called lack of oversight. The article also failed to explain why Miller tried to avoid testifying and why she never wrote a story about the events, they said.

''It's quite possible that of all the scandals and disturbances that the Times has gone through, this is the worst," said Michael Wolff, a media critic for Vanity Fair.

While the account was unusually revealing, said Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, ''Judith Miller's future is really in question. Her attempt to defend herself leaves a deep, self-inflicted wound."

She made matters worse, said Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University.

''She subtracted from public knowledge by introducing this unknown source whose name she couldn't remember," Rosen said. ''It's almost like the gaps in the Nixon tapes."

Inside the Times newsroom, reporters were angry and disappointed. ''People here are seething. They want some resolution," said one senior reporter.

Alex Jones, a former Times reporter who heads the Center for the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, said the paper's credibility is in question.

The Times already was trying to recover from the damage inflicted when former reporter Jayson Blair was found to have fabricated stories for years.

''They have to go back and explain what happened," said Jones. ''If they don't, the Times's credibility will be severely damaged."

Media critic Ken Auletta of the New Yorker, however, said it was plausible Miller could have forgotten a source's name.

''It's not like [Robert] Woodward and [Carl] Bernstein forgetting the identify of Deep Throat," he said.

But others were less forgiving.

''She should be promptly dismissed for crimes against journalism and her own newspaper," wrote Greg Mitchell, editor for the newspaper trade journal Editor and Publisher.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said she had no immediate response to the media critics.

One bright spot for Miller: The Society of Professional Journalists plans to honor her today with its First Amendment Award for her willingness to go to jail rather than give up a source.

Information from the Associated Press was included in this report.