[This is a June article, but it just popped up on Mediabistro today, and I just saw it, so...] American Journalism Review's Charles Layton defends Times reporter Judith Miller's reporting from Iraqor, more specifically, asks Miller to defend it. Layton spends most of the article laying out the charges then gives Miller space for rebuttal. Her defense, however, seems to be "fuck you; I worked hard." She chronicles the inconveniences of war reporting ("sandstorms blowing, wild dogs howling, sometimes exposed to the elements without rain gear or sleeping gear, with little more than the personal effects she had crammed into her 'little blue backpack from the Gap.' Plus, she says, someone sat on her computer and broke it") and says it was really hard to work her way into military bureaucracy to get the information she got. And I'm sure it was. But that's not a defense. Her second protest is that she "got the story." Getting a story is not the same as getting the story. Layton then declares her the winner in the argument on the basis that the rest of the media did a shitty job of covering the war as well.
Miller brouhaha [AJR]