Posted on 02/07/2003 5:49:40 AM PST by The Rant
Helen Thomas, the senior White House correspondent who is nicknamed the “Dean of the White House Press Corp”, has made some astoundingly flippant remarks about President George W. Bush that leads one to believe that her time as an effective journalist has passed and that certainly her ability to at least offer the illusion of being an objective reporter has vanished.
Recently, at the Society for Professional Journalists’ annual awards banquet, this once celebrated reporter, who in the beginning of her career possessed the clear vision that every honest journalist embraces, the goal of being an unbiased reporter, has through her liberal leanings completed her transition from actual journalist to the dilapidated, egotistical windbag that we see before us today. She achieved this lowly state with the following quote to a reporter: “This is the worst president ever,” she said. “He is the worst president in all of American history.”
With these words of editorialization she effectively relinquishes her rights to call herself a reporter, as do most of the so-called reporters of the modern mainstream media. The one principle that a genuine journalist must hold most dear is the need and the mandate to report the truth without editorial. There are outlets for commentary, conjecture and editorial and those are the editorial pages, the Op-Ed columns, the opinion news programs and the countless opinion sites available on the Internet today. These places are where conjecture, commentary and opinion have their place. These are the places where the “I believes” and the “what ifs” belong, not in the news columns and at the anchor desks. Yet, increasingly we are seeing the likes of the Thomas’s, the Rather’s, and the Brokaw’s moving away from simply reporting the news and falling into a pattern of having to inject their opinions into the stories themselves. This in effect creates a completely different and inaccurate story. As they offer these stories (and that is exactly what they end up being) to the American public and the world community as fact they are in actuality tainting the truth and attempting to rewrite history.
Imagine being able to turn on the television and hear a news story without commentary and conjecture. It used to be that way. In the days of my Father it was that way, although during the later years of that era this tainted quality of reporting started to creep in. I remember when instead of injecting their opinions into the actual news stories themselves a news anchor would have to turn to the side camera and state his or her opinion in a separate segment and end it with a disclaimer that it was only their opinion. Commentary in the past was always denoted and obvious to the viewer or reader. In the newspapers, quite some time before the internet, the readers always knew that if they wanted the hard news, the accurate news, that they simply had to stay away from the editorial or Op-Ed sections of the paper because that is where they knew some jackass was spouting off at the mouth with what they “thought” was the actuality behind a story. The reader never had to worry about a reporter’s opinion being injected into the news because there was a clear boundary, a division if you will, between what was news and what was opinion. Today, sadly, that cannot be said for any news outlet, especially here in the United States.
Don’t confuse the need for the separation of news and opinion as a demand that it not exist. To limit opinion would truly be anti-American, anti-freedom. In fact, one should be encouraged to establish their opinion about the things that they feel are important in the world everyday if they should choose to do so and they should feel compelled to. And although this might bring some pretty strange character’s opinions out into the mainstream, it is everyone’s right to be able to express their opinions. People have fought and died defending that right and we should all gladly do so to protect it today and in the future. The age of the Internet affords everyone the opportunity to express his or her opinions with much greater ease than in any other time in history. It is an evolving freedom that ensures that dictators and manipulators like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden or Kim Jong Il will never come to power here in the United States. But along with that freedom comes a heightened responsibility; we must become more refined and a bit more discriminating in how we utilize these freedoms.
We cannot allow one person's observational opinions to become the news. We cannot have major news outlets allowing serious news stories to become twisted in their facts because if we do we start to see a partisan slant in the issues and the facts of the actual story become mired in opinion instead of fact. In essence, if we allow the mainstream media to inject commentary and conjecture into the facts of any news story we risk the actuality of the dark and insidious world that George Orwell wrote about in “1984” when newspeak was the order of the day. If we allow this to happen then public opinion will be replaced by the opinion of a few newspaper owners and their minions. Freedom, as we know it today will cease to exist.
It is important that we, the American people, not allow this to happen. How do we go about this? Well, it isn’t going to be easy because it has to be done in mass but it is simple: we stop catering to the news media as if they were the informational and intellectual superior that they believe themselves to be. You see their disingenuous courting every Sunday morning on the press shows with the talking heads. Why should we care if Ari Fleischer has Helen Thomas removed from the White House press briefings? She has proved with her latest statement that her news gathering ability has waned and that she has a clear and absolute partisan opinion rendering her ineffective as a news reporter. Would there be uproar in the media community? Absolutely, and that is because they would be protecting their right to hold their opinions over the heads of our leaders, dictate what they believe the reality of any given situation is to the American people and hold a misinformed public as their charge to do so. This is unacceptable behavior when it comes down to the public trust. This is crazy power.
It is time that the American public takes the tool of “fact-editorialization” away from the reporter and demand that if the reporter wants to state his or her opinion that they do so in the editorial pages, the Op-Ed pages, the television shows and the Internet sites that cater to such things. There are enough of them out there, just take a look. We have allowed too much editorialization of the facts to occur already and that is why we have seen the birth and effectiveness of all who would spin for a living including the likes of James Carville. Do you believe that he spins because of the truth or because the truth needs to be seen in a different light? If we removed the aspect of comment and conjecture from news and placed it where it belongs we wouldn’t have to worry about the spin. We could rest assured that what we take in as information from the news would be opinion free and based on fact eliminating the need to “read between the lines”. Now, wouldn’t that be a pleasant change of pace?
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Frank Salvato is a common man and freelance writer from the Midwest who has spent time traveling throughout the world while going about his life. His views are entirely his own. He can be contacted at TheRant@attbi.com. His writings can be seen at www.TheRant.us.
Decades ago.....
I think it's WONDERFUL that Helen's petty and nasty personal attacks on President Bush go on the public record. Her daily verbal blow job fantasies about Clinton are even better. The way to deal with darkness and it's slime is to expose it to the light.
.............she effectively relinquishes her rights to call herself a reporter..........one principle that a genuine journalist must hold most dear is the need and the mandate to report the truth without editorial. There are outlets for commentary, conjecture and editorial.........
Though shared by many.
I can't stop chuckling at this!
Actually, though I don't get to see the press briefings everyday, the ones I have seen I've loved the way Ari handles her. He is just great in "one upping" her if you will. I have seen him pre-empt her in anticipation and also seen him give an answer to her question with "and what do YOU think Helen?" tacked on the end of his answer. She'd reply of course, and he would say, "That's what I figured you thought" or something to that effect! Once I even heard him start out his answer with, "I know you don't agree with the President Helen, but this is what he believes in this case...." It's obvious that Ari's had her number from the getgo and has had no problems letting the rest of the world see her for who or what she is in his interaction with her!
From which planet did this guy just arrive?
One day several years ago I was walking into the Simthsonian, a lady grabbed the coffee cup I had discarded into a trash can and finished it. She then pushed her grocery cart on up the street. I knew I should have recognized her, now I remember who it was. :-)
With these words of editorialization she effectively relinquishes her rights to call herself a reporter, as do most of the so-called reporters of the modern mainstream media.
Listen, Bud, I have a right to call myself a reporter! It's called "freedom of speech", and it's part of the First Amendment. And if I can do it, so can she. And she can print it in The New York Times if the owner of that paper says she can. That First Amendment thinggy, again.Which only boils down to the fact that "reporter" is not an exclusive club, except to the extent that you and I sucker for the con that it is. Anyone who accepts a distinction between "talk radio" and "broadcast journalism" is a sucker.
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