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…)

Death and journalism have always maintained a delicate and sometimes weird relationship.  During my days as a news writer for the old United Press International, my first lesson on the subject involved events with death tolls.  Any time the death toll is uncertain, the rule was to always go with the lowest ascertainable figure available.  The logic for low-balling death counts was clear as crystal; in news copy, it’s easier to kill people than it is to bring them back from the dead.

Julianna and Theresa Rolle

I was also taught the standard rules that applied to reporting on deaths.  There’s weren’t a lot of them but they managed to cover most circumstances:

• Was the person a minor?  (Child deaths are always more sensitive)
• Was the person a public official? (The public’s right to know is paramount)
• Was the death a public event? (Was it caused by a natural disaster? A fire? A crime? People have a natural and legitimate interest)
• Did the person occupy a degree of public awareness? (Movie stars and other non-elected but notable persons fit into this category)
• Did the circumstances of the death include a societal or public safety issue? (Death caused by bad roads, bad policy or bad ideas are absolutely fair game)
• Was it a freak of nature? (People are just sort of attracted to, well, freak stories)
• Is it a slow news day? (Like it or not, it’s a fact of life when covering death)
• What is the geographic depth of interest? (A routine death in a smaller town is far more newsworthy than a routine death in a major city)

Regrettably, even these somewhat loosy-goosey protocols of decorum and judgment have been lost in what passes for 21st-century reporting, the most recent example being this dreadful breach of professionalism from Gawker. (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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