Why Helen Thomas No Longer Has a Lifetime Achievement Award Named After Her

By: Allan Wolper

This is a column about politicizing journalism, alleged anti-Semitism, the Israeli-Palestinian land dispute, the Holocaust, freedom of speech, hate speech, the power of the Israeli lobby in Washington, D.C., the future of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the legacy of Helen Thomas herself.

It is about what is ethical and what is fair, and whether journalists have the right to spout off incendiary, factually flawed opinions without paying a price for it.

It pits the leadership of the Society of Professional Journalists — the keeper of a Code of Ethics that is a template for journalism behavior — against SPJ supporters of Helen Thomas, a 90-year-old icon of the profession. To the non-journalistic world, it would seem like an inside baseball food fight.

The SPJ executive committee and its national board of governors voted earlier this year to “retire” its Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement because of allegedly anti-Semitic remarks attributed to her.

That decision, and the way it was handled, infuriated Christine Tatum, a former president of SPJ, and Ray Hanania, a Chicago columnist and coordinator of the National Arab American Journalists Association. Hanania sees the decision as an example of SPJ’s alleged bias against Arab journalists, a charge SPJ fiercely denies.

The Thomas supporters within the SPJ are planning to ask the delegates to the organization’s national convention in September to reinstate the award and keep her name on it.

The controversy started innocently enough last May 27 during American Heritage Month on the White House lawn. David F. Nesenoff — a Stony Brook, N.Y. rabbi, independent filmmaker, and blogger with the popular website RabbiLive.com — approached Thomas. Nesenoff was with his teenage son, and a friend of his son, all of whom wore press credentials around their necks. The boys were covering the event for their Jewish teen website, ShmoozePOINT.com. Nesenoff told Thomas the boys were thinking of becoming journalists. What did she think of the idea?

“Go for it,” Thomas said, smiling into Nesenoff’s video camera. “You’ll never be unhappy. You’ll always keep people informed, and you’ll always keep learning. That’s the greatest thing about the profession, you’ll always keep learning.”

That interview was a lesson that Thomas, a Lebanese American, will never forget. Nesenoff kept asking questions. Did Thomas have any thoughts about Israel?

“They should get the hell out of Palestine,” she replied. “They’re living on occupied land. It’s not Germany, it’s not Poland.”

“Where should they go?” Nesenoff asked. “What should they do?”

“Go home,” Thomas answered.

“Where’s home?” Nesenoff persisted.

“Poland, Germany,” Thomas replied.

Next came the question that led to Thomas’ downfall: “So you’re saying Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?” Nesenoff asked.

“And America and everywhere else,” Thomas replied.

One week later, on June 3, Nesenoff posted a one-minute, edited YouTube video that focused only on Thomas’ remarks on Israel. It concluded with a video blackboard full of comments that challenged her journalistic integrity:

“Six million Jews were killed at home in Germany and Poland. Does Helen know that Jews lived in Israel way before the Holocaust? How can Helen possibly report unbiased?” It went viral. As of March 3, 2011, it had recorded 1,727,607 hits.

To critics in SPJ’s leadership, the mainline media, and various Jewish Organizations, this was proof of Thomas’ anti-Semitic feelings.

To her supporters, the interview was an ambush by a partisan, Jewish blogger, who sandbagged her by inserting the word “Jews” in his question when she was referring to Israel, the country. “What happened to free speech?” they asked. “What’s wrong with giving her opinion? It’s what she does for a living.”

It’s not free speech, her critics responded. It’s hate speech. She’s rewriting history.

Thomas apologized, but it did no good. The media coverage was unrelenting. The watchdog of the White House press room — the first female White House correspondent, a fearless questioner of presidents since John F. Kennedy, a pathfinder for female journalists — was seen as being in league with the world’s worst anti-Semitic propagandists. She was dropped by her speakers bureau and abandoned by her colleagues in the White House Correspondents Association.

Wayne State University, her alma mater, decided to discontinue its Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity Award. However, it retained the Helen Thomas Scholarship she initially endowed 10 years ago with a $10,000 contribution.

She resigned as a columnist for the Hearst News Service, a job she had held since 2000 — the same year that SPJ made her the first recipient of the Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement. 

Soon afterward, SPJ debated what to do. Its decision? Forget about it for a while.

Why? Because it was a one-time misstep or slip-up resulting from “questionable interview tactics,” according to an internal report by Joe Skeel, SPJ’s executive director. Still, the idea that SPJ, an arbiter of fairness, ethics, and free speech, would even consider distancing itself from Helen Thomas because of what she said is causing an undercurrent of distaste among its membership that won’t go away.

In fact, the following month, SPJ gave its Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement to David Perlman, then 91, a legendary science writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, who barely paid any attention to the controversy. “What she said was stupid,” Perlman, who is Jewish, recently told me. “But I was very glad they honored me. I have that glass symbol in my house.”

In December, Thomas got into trouble again. She told a conference of Arab journalists that “Congress, the White House, and Hollywood are owned by Zionists. No question.” That did it.

The SPJ executive committee in January voted 6 to 1 to retire the award, and the full board of directors went along, 14 to 7. The rationale was stunning: There was a fear that future recipients would have to answer questions about Helen Thomas instead of talking about their lifelong accomplishments.

The committee said that it would not ask former recipients Tom Brokaw, Chuck Stone, Robert Churchwell, Caryl Rivers, Alan Walden, Stan Chambers, Ed Barber, Tom and Pat Gish, all important journalism names, to return their awards.

Helen Thomas has not said whether she will keep hers.

The SPJ Thomas supporters believe the organization buckled under pressure from Jewish organizations led by Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. They cite as proof a letter he wrote to SPJ castigating Thomas, which was printed online and in Quill magazine, SPJ’s monthly publication.

The other side of that story is just as ugly. David Nesenoff, the rabbi who started the controversy, told various media organizations that he had received 25,000 angry e-mails, many of them quite threatening.

And SPJ Thomas supporters whisper that Hagit Limor, the Israeli born president of SPJ, is Jewish, a not-so-nice way to hint that she might not have been as fair as she could have been. I have found no evidence to support that notion. Meanwhile, Limor, an investigative reporter for WCPO-TV in Cincinnati, has been bombarded with angry telephone calls from non-journalistic Thomas supporters.

This sad story is the result of a new media world in which journalists — encouraged by their editors — Twitter, blog, Facebook, link, video themselves, and fire off quotes without thinking, believing they can speak out on contentious issues without consequences.

 

Meanwhile, Helen Thomas began writing in January for the Falls Church News-Press, a weekly newspaper that is circulated in Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. “I got an overwhelming positive reaction,” said Nicholas F. Benton, editor and founder of the newspaper. “I’ve gotten messages from everywhere thanking me for having the guts to bring her back.”

And that same month, David Nesenoff was appointed publisher of The Jewish Star, a weekly newspaper in Garden City, Long Island, which covers issues of special interest to orthodox Jewry.

It may be a new world electronically, but the old standards still apply. Journalists are supposed to report the news or analyze it, but as much as possible keep themselves out of it.

 

Allan Wolper, professor of journalism at Rutgers University, is the host of “Conversations with Allan Wolper,” a podcast on WBGO.org, an NPR affiliate in the New York area. He has won more than 50 journalism prizes. His ethics columns in E&P have been honored by The National Press Club and the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.