We have finally reached the number one, most left-biased journalist in America today on our top ten count down and our most biased journo pick probably won’t surprise any of you. Even though she just “retired” due to her outrageous bias and hatred for Israel, we just have to give the number one most biased slot to the ever-vitriolic Ms. Helen Thomas, long time employee of United Press International (UPI) and the Hearst New Service.

Thomas was an over 50-year employee of UPI but in the year 2000 she quit the wire service because it was bought by News World Communications which is affiliated with the Unification Church. She was proud of herself, though, because according to her she was “never, never accused of bias” in her reporting.

I worked for United Press International for more than fifty years, and I wrote straight copy. I was never, never accused of bias. I did not bow out of the human race. I permitted myself to care, to believe, to think. But I assure you, I assure you that it did not get in my copy.

But that isn’t what her record says. Bias was epidemic throughout. In May of 2000 the MRC went back and found at least half a dozen instances where Thomas readily revealed her bias. Instances range from Ronald Reagan’s days in office up to the year 2000 when she quit UPI.

The MRC found in part: (more…)

You know, she really wasn’t that bad. Sure, she said something pretty stupid about Israel on video, but taken in the context of her life — taken in the context of the narrative — she was a woman of enormous accomplishment.

That, at least, is the argument being made on Salon by Anna Clark:

Had Thomas retired a month ago, the news would have cued a celebration of her contributions to journalism. And let’s be frank: These contributions are truly astonishing. In 1943, a year after she graduated from Wayne State University, she was hired by United Press International. So began a long trajectory of barrier breaking in the places where media and politics meet, places that are hardly welcoming to professional women. Thomas became the first female officer of the National Press Club — which had been exclusively male for nearly a century — and the first female officer of the White House Correspondents Association. She served as the WHCA’s first female president in the mid-1970s. Thomas also helped persuade President Kennedy…

You get the picture: Helen Thomas is not being celebrated for the stories she broke, or her wit, or her insight: she’s being celebrated for her sex. Or gender, to use the current term. To which the only proper response is: so what?

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So far, they haven’t said.

Amazingly, she may skate. From Politico:

… there’s a sense amongst Thomas’ colleagues that little will — or should — be done within the White House Correspondents Association in reaction to this. Much of that is due simply to the high premium placed amongst journalists on one’s freedom of speech. Another is out of respect for Thomas’ storied career. And, lastly, Thomas turns 90 in just a few months and there is a feeling that she ought to be able to enter the sunset of her life with grace and respect.

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Helen Thomas, liberal icon and veteran White House correspondent for UPI and Hearst, owned up to her hatred of Jews this week when she declared that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine!” and go back to Germany. Her remarks are only the latest and worst in her long history of Israel-bashing. They are also an embarrassment to the establishment Democrats who have lately been using Thomas to raise campaign cash.

Only last month, Thomas headlined Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s big campaign fundraiser, the “9th Annual Ultimate Women’s Power Lunch” in Chicago. The list of guests included all of the major Democratic candidates for federal office, including Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias and 10th district contender Dan Seals. Senator Dick Durbin was also there, as were representatives of J Street, the new lobby for left-wing policies on Israel.

Rep. Schakowsky and her guests were well aware of Thomas’s record of anti-Israel rhetoric, and were invited to distance themselves from her views. None did. Instead, Rep. Schakowsky declared proudly of Thomas: “She’s so awesome!”

Thomas’s comments are also problematic for Giannoulias, whose family foundation funds radical anti-Israel groups such as Electronic Intifada, which it honored at a benefit last year. (more…)

Did we just hear Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal try to blame local journalists for his ‘misspoken’ words about his Vietnam war record? When Blumenthal was asked at Tuesday’s press conference why he didn’t correct published accounts of his Vietnam service, he said:

There were a few articles, not many. I am responsible for my own statements….I can’t be responsible for all the articles, I may not even have seen them. ….sometimes journalists do make mistakes.

Cr: Chion Wolf

Really?  Sure, journalists get quotes and background wrong from time to time but civil servants, who are in the public eye like Blumenthal, often call right away to demand a correction. In fact, that’s just what our A.G.’s press staff usually did with me – even when I wrote the quotes exactlyas he said them during phone interviews. Case in point: (more…)