Dubai : "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." That's one lesson that Judith Miller, disgraced former reporter of the New York Times, says she learnt from her experience of pre-war reporting that stirred a nationwide controversy in the United States and landed her in jail five years ago.

Speaking to XPRESS on a visit to Dubai on January 5, Miller said, "If your sources are wrong, you are going to be wrong. My sources were wrong, I tried to verify what they said. In the world of intelligence, that is very difficult."

A Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist, Miller was accused of pushing false intelligence in the early 2000s about Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) by quoting American intelligence experts and unnamed government officials, even as her stories were cited as justification for war.

Alleged involvement

Her alleged involvement in the disclosure of the identity of a covert CIA agent Valerie Plame also stirred controversy and she spent three months in jail for claiming reporter's privilege and refusing to divulge her sources.

Asked how the credibility of a source could be verified, "We are never going to be sure," she said, Any regrets? "None," she said, adding, "I did the best I could."

In the context of the UAE, Miller, who has reported on the Middle East for 30 years, said, "My advice to government officials is to be more transparent. Dubai and the UAE have a great story to tell. And silence is the enemy."

Miller said the widespread criticism against Dubai in the western press is unjustified. "It is taken out of context," she said, adding that it does not factor the enormous cultural, economic and social growth of the city. "Oil wealth does not guarantee peace or progress. The UAE has used oil wealth wisely and this is not understood as it should be in America," she said.

 

 

 

 

On her role as fellow at the Manhattan Institute think-tank, she said, "I write about national security and civil liberties. It is not easy for this country (the UAE) or America because terrorists are very committed."

Commending business transparency in the UAE, she said: "An open society is very vulnerable, yet openness is what we are defending. There is business openness in the UAE and money and people move faster than ideas."

Addressing a forum on media perspectives in architecture earlier, she said the press in the UAE should focus more on investigative reporting and issues concerning civil society.