Judy and her job

WSJ.com - New York Times Reporter Miller Is in Talks Over Her Job Status
New York Times reporter Judith Miller has begun discussing her future employment options with the newspaper, including the possibility of a severance package, a lawyer familiar with the matter, said yesterday.

The discussion about her future comes several days after the public rupture of the relationship between the Times and Ms. Miller, a 28-year veteran of the paper. Both the editor and the publisher of the Times have expressed regret for their unequivocal support for Ms. Miller when she spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the unmasking of a Central Intelligence Agency operative.

I assume that Miller has already been fired, but is trying to get the NYT to continue paying her upcoming legal fees. Maybe she is also trying to have a say on who will review her upcoming book - giving herself a veto if her book is to be reviewed by an avowed staff-room enemy.

The newspaper began to distance itself from the reporter last week after the particulars of Ms. Miller's relationship with Mr. [Scooter] Libby were revealed in a first-person account of her testimony and in an independently reported piece in the Times. Those articles suggested that Ms. Miller may have misled the paper about a previously undisclosed meeting with Mr. Libby, and that the paper was negligent in not asking Ms. Miller more questions about her involvement before advancing her cause.

Over the weekend, two columnists for the New York Times wrote pieces questioning whether Ms. Miller could continue working for the paper. Ms. Miller currently is on vacation. She was released from jail Sept. 29.

In 2002, Ms. Miller was among a team of 10 Times reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Middle East after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She has since become a subject of controversy for her prewar reporting on Iraq's nuclear capabilities, which bolstered the Bush administration's case for an invasion.

Many of those reports, which relied in part on anonymous administration officials, turned out to be incorrect. The Times has since acknowledged flaws in the reporting and published a series of articles correcting the mistakes. Ms. Miller has said she may write a book about her recent experiences.

Tags: Judy_Miller, /media