The US Media Hit on Helen Thomas

[ooglymoogly]

By Danny Schechter
December 29, 2010

Editor’s Note: Last June when the mainstream Washington press corps rode the 89-year-old journalistic icon Helen Thomas out of the news business on a rail, a key count in the professional “indictment” against her was that she lacked “objectivity” with her impertinent questions to U.S. presidents and in her criticism of Israel.

However, for years among big-time U.S. journalists, “objectivity” has been a principle most noticeable in its absence, especially on the sensitive issue of Israel, the topic that touched off the furor that ended Thomas’s career, as Danny Schechter notes in this guest essay:

In 1960, I co-founded a student magazine at Cornell University called Dialogue. I was a wannabe journalist, fixated on emulating the courageous media personalities of the times from Edward R. Murrow to a distinctive figure I came to admire at Presidential press conferences, a wire service reporter named Helen Thomas.

Rest of article here. http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/71-71/4459-t

Its a few days old but what the hay.

Full disclosure of OP: I love Helen Thomas

[Blue Owl]

1. It's a good thing we have Judith Miller from Newsmax

to remind us all what good journalism is all about.

:sarcasm:

[madrchsod]

2. she was ambushed for a reason....

she said what a lot of people in that region are afraid to say.

[xchrom]

3. recommend

[MadBadger]

4. There is no defending her "Zionists" Rant

[hlthe2b]

5. I remain incredibly sad about this entire incident...

Incredibly so... Helen Thomas was made an example to demonstrate what happens to other journalists who deviate from the "party line." She was inarticulate and put forth a very uncomfortable POV. But, the answer to the disagreement with her comments was to unceremoniously destroy the long and lauded career of this 90 year old woman. This only serves to demonstrate that w.e have no real fourth estate in this country. We are all the poorer for it, no matter what you may think of Helen Thomas and her comments.

[asjr]

6. Amen to that!