Veteran journalist Helen Thomas recently spoke to communication students at American University recently about politics and her career as a journalist. Thomas called journalism the best profession saying that “You’ll always have an education everyday, you’ll always keep learning.”
As for her style of questioning she said that when interviewing government officials that you have to challenge them and make them explain. In her opinion the media failed to question the president following 9/11. I am not sure what questions she would have asked, but I imagine they wouldn’t have been particularly fair.
While admitting to the students that she has some outspoken political and personal opinions she maintained that she is unbiased in her writings. “I had to stick to the facts, keep all my feelings emotions and opinions out of my copy.” Say What? This would be somewhat easier to believe if it wasn’t for her increasingly vitriolic attacks on President Bush and his administration. She told the Daily Breeze in Torrance, California that Bush is the worst president ever and the “worst president in all of American history.” In one White House briefing she asked then press secretary Ari Fleischer “Ari, does the President think that the Palestinians have a right to resist 35 years of brutal military occupation and suppression?” ignoring the suicide bombers who have killed scores of innocent people. Remember Thomas is an Arab-American and has a particular interest in the Middle East, just not an unbiased one.
Helen may have been able to fool the students at AU which isn’t exactly known as a bastion of conservative thought, but her record reveals the truth and it isn’t an unbiased one. Just check out her presidential report card.
At least now that Thomas works for Hearst Newspapers as a columnist she no longer has to try and disguise her opinions as news. She truly is the “First Lady of the Liberal Press.”
