Keller reflects on decisions in the Judith Miller affair

Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, discussed the future of mainstream journalism Monday afternoon, at a time when his paper has been both the source and the subject of the news.

"Like most people at the Times, I am suffering from a serious case of Judy Miller fatigue," Keller told a capacity crowd in Dodds Auditorium, referring to the former Times reporter who last week resigned from the paper following scrutiny from colleagues and outside critics about her role in the Valerie Plame leak investigation.

In his hour-long speech titled "America Media: Still the Fourth Estate?" Keller discussed the Miller GS '72 affair at length, both defending and criticitizing the Times' role in the affair.

Keller said he was right to support Miller's refusal to testify initially in the CIA leak investigation, but that the paper should have been more critical of Miller's reporting, beginning with her now largely-discredited stories on alleged WMDs in Iraq.

"Newspapers are written and edited by human beings. We get things wrong," he said, adding, "What other industry labors so hard to air its dirty laundry?"

After running through the lengthy series of events surrounding the scandal, Keller joked, "This concludes the mea culpa section of our show."

He added: "It's not neat, it doesn't add up to a simple parable, but it's life."

During a question-and-answer session following his speech, Keller was asked whether news organizations are too willing to give equal coverage to sides of an argument that are unequal in validity.

"There seems to be this burgeoning hunger for moral clarity in our society," Keller said, referring to news outlets that simply confirm viewers' or readers' preexisting beliefs.

"We should be the advocate of complexity and ambiguity and information that challenges people's preconceptions," he said. "Impartiality is a hard thing to guarantee, but it should not boil down to one [commentator] from Column A and one from Column B."

Another audience member asked whether The New York Times could still find a niche in a news market saturated with celebrity gossip and ideological spin.

"I don't buy the notion that people only come to sources of information from the extremes," he said. "I think most people have a range of interests and they ... seem to like having one place where they can go and trust us to give them some sense of what's important and what it means."

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One audience member, Amber Mahone, a graduate student in the Wilson School, said she was surprised that Keller was so critical of himself and his paper, "considering that The New York Times is probably the best paper in the country."

"I think he was very candid, which I appreciate, and also very thoughtful about the Judith Miller case, and also the broader implications of that for journalistic freedom," she said.