For Some Journalists, The Sword Could Be Mightier Then the Pen

In the competitive world of journalism, the pin is mightier then the sword. But whenever journalists decide to obtain fame and prestige by fabricating a story, the pin is no match against the sword determine to slice their careers.

Just ask reporters Jayson Blair, Janet Cooke, Jay Foreman, Stephen Glass and Patricia Smith who share a common trait of being caught of overloading their stories with fiction. They embarrassed themselves and their editors with exaggerations, outright lies and embellishments to publish the big stories.

Judith Miller, a controversial reporter of New York Times, has already built herself a long record of violating journalistic ethics before being sentenced to jail for refusing to testify the leak of the CIA operative.

She misinformed public opinion that Iraq posed weapons of mass destruction threw dubious sources and untrustworthy officials such as Ahmad Chalabi - a proven liar and corrupted businessman whose opponents call him a charlatan. Even the hard neoconservative in Washington lost trust in him. Miller’s sensationalism forced New York Times to acknowledge her mistakes and reassess its coverage on Iraq.

She claims being an expert on the Middle East in her book God has ninety nine names. However, according to deceased Ivy League professor Edward Said in his book Covering Islam, she has little knowledge of either Arabic or Persian. She prefers to ignore prominent Muslim, Arab and non-Orientalist scholars to comment on Islam or Middle Eastern politics. She also defends her political views extremely on unreliable sources and Orientalist intellectuals. Said wrote “Miller in short is a shallow, opinionated journalist whose gigantic book is five hundred pages too long for what ends up saying, even though it is perfect compendium of what is wrong with the unthinking, unexamined assumptions taken up and circulated by the media”.

Miller probably assumes that being incarcerated for refusing to identify a source will recuperate her honor. However, her sensationalism is the sword that has left an incurable wound in her credibility.