Reporter Miller
Is Spinning Fast
>From Times Orbit
By Anna Schneider-Mayerson, Tom Scocca and Gabriel Sherman
By Tuesday, Oct. 25, the legal team that had backed New York Times reporter Judith Miller in her battle with Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald began splintering, as the interests of the reporter and The Times diverged.
Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer hired by The Times to help handle Ms. Miller’s showdown with Mr. Fitzgerald, told The Observer “it would be awkward” for him to offer Ms. Miller legal advice now.
“It’s one thing to represent her and to keep her confidences in the battle against Fitzgerald, but that’s a different situation than the situation in which there may be differences between her and the paper itself,” Mr. Abrams said, adding that he remains close to Ms. Miller.
And who was representing the paper? The Times’ ultimate decision maker, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., was a vanishing presence. As other layers of Ms. Miller’s support fell noisily away, there was no support from her from the publisher; he has not been seen by reporters in the newsroom since Oct. 3, when he triumphantly led Ms. Miller home from jail—although, according to multiple newsroom sources, on the morning of Oct. 24, he met with Ms. Miller in his office. A Times spokesperson declined to confirm that the meeting had taken place.
“There is a certain amount of chaos,” a Times staffer said. “Everyone is talking about the publisher.”
The editors of The Times had begun overtly turning against Ms. Miller a week earlier, on Tuesday, Oct. 18, at the weekly third-floor meeting of masthead editors. Executive editor Bill Keller wasn’t there—he was in Beijing, on a tour of foreign bureaus; nor was managing editor Jill Abramson, who was off delivering a speech at Middlebury College in Vermont. With managing editor John Geddes presiding, the editors at the meeting agreed that the paper was in crisis, and that the roiling would persist until Ms. Miller left The Times, according to a person who was present.
“It was unanimous,” the source said. “People said we have a real problem, because the newsroom is worried what will happen to her next. They want her to be dealt with decisively, and they want her to be dealt with more aggressively.” ...
<http://www.observer.com/pageone_offtherec.asp>
Carl