By: E&P Staff In a lengthy exchange with Jenny DeMonte at the PressThink blog, Irwin Gratz, whose term as president of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) ended on Oct. 18, again defends the group's decision to give embattled New York Times reporter Judith Miller its First Amendment award last month.
DeMonte, a former editor and SPJ member and now an education blogger,
cites lengthy passages from Gratz's explanation and offers her own commentary in a feature posted today. (Joe Strupp
interviewed Gratz on this subject Monday). She also publishes two clauses critical of Miller that were part of an SPJ resolution on anonymous sources, and then removed. One noted that Miller's coverage of WMD, using such sources, turned out to be wrong, and the other said that her case shows "the danger of excessive willingness to grant confidentiality and to mischaracterize the nature of confidential sources, thus allowing such sources to hide possible motive and manipulate public opinion."
In an introduction to the feature, PressThink creator Jay Rosen writes, "I asked her to find out from Irwin Gratz (a former student of mine at NYU) what's up with this big splashy award to Judy Miller at the SPJ convention in Las Vegas. I found it staggering myself."
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