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Society for Professional Journalists to Meet January 8th Regarding Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement
The Society for Professional Journalists’ online publication, Quill, is open for feedback regarding the renaming of the SPJ Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Below are two letters written against and in defense of Ms. Thomas. Please be advised that letters can be accepted at: quill@spj.org
From the Quill/SPJ Website:
Quill and SPJ have received feedback on renaming the Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement in the aftermath of recent and past comments made by the award’s namesake. After the first incident in summer 2010, the SPJ Executive Committee discussed removing Thomas’ name from the award; however, the decision at the time was to leave the award as-is. In the wake of recent comments and wide news coverage of a speech in which Thomas defended her earlier statements, and made additional related ones, the SPJ Executive Committee will again consider renaming the Helen Thomas Award. The meeting will take place January 8 in Nashville, Tenn.
Following are two letters Quill has received on the topic. Submit letters to quill@spj.org
SPJ should rename or discontinue Helen Thomas Award
To the Editor:
In light of the shocking anti-Semitic remarks by longtime White House correspondent Helen Thomas, we believe it is time for the Society of Professional Journalists to rename or discontinue the “Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement,” which the SPJ has annually bestowed since honoring Ms. Thomas with the award in 2000.
Although she at first apologized for the anti-Jewish remarks that led to her abrupt resignation from Hearst Newspapers in June, Ms. Thomas made clear in a speech in Dearborn, Michigan on December 3 that she did not regret her comment that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine.” She followed that admission with an anti-Semitic diatribe worthy of the 19th century conspiratorially minded anti-Semitic fraud, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” She claimed that “Zionists” are the hidden hand behind U.S. government policy and opinion vis-à-vis Israel, and repeated the classic anti-Semitic canard that Jews “control” the White House and Hollywood. “We are owned by the propagandists against the Arabs. There’s no question about that,” Ms. Thomas said. “Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where their mouth is …. We’re being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.”
This episode was a sad final chapter to an otherwise illustrious career as a trailblazer for women and minorities in journalism. Unlike her first off-the-cuff remarks into a camera, Thomas’ comments were carefully thought out and reveal a person who is deeply infected with anti-Semitism.
In the immediate aftermath of her Dearborn speech, Thomas’ alma mater, Wayne State University, announced that it would no longer bestow its “Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity in Media Award.” We believe that was the right decision, and that other journalism schools and institutions who have honored Thomas should now follow suit. No academic institution or organization should want to be associated with an unrepentant anti-Semite and bigot, and it should no longer be considered an honor to receive an award bearing her name.
ABRAHAM H. FOXMAN
National Director, Anti-Defamation League
Wayne State University wrong to discontinue Helen Thomas Award
To the Editor:
I read in the papers that my beloved alma mater, Wayne State University, has “retired” the Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity in the Media award because of controversial remarks made by the award’s namesake. In reading some of these remarks – at the time they were made, and again today – I find that, in every case, she has done no more than express her opinion, in fact, regularly using phrases like “in my opinion” and “I think that…” With all due respect to Helen Thomas’ last professional job as an “opinion columnist” for Hearst Newspapers, I fail to see the controversy.
Frankly, even considering all the common infirmities affecting her in her 91st year, I find many of her recent remarks, about Israel and the Middle East, to be deplorable and without basis in fact.
However, the same First Amendment that protects my right to be a Jew and a Zionist in America, protects Helen Thomas’ right to express her opinion of Jews and Zionists, no matter what that opinion may be. And while I vehemently disagree with the opinions she has expressed about Jews and Zionists, I will defend, as long as I live, her right to express them.
That’s what they were teaching at Wayne State University’s School of Journalism when I was a student there… when Helen Thomas was a student there. I fear today that my professors and hers are turning in their graves.
I cannot imagine any American journalist – let alone fellow alumni of Helen Thomas – being anything but humbled, honored and proud to receive an award named for her and commemorating her long, distinguished career and many achievements as a woman, a correspondent and an author.
Officials at Wayne State apparently believe that, by canceling the Helen Thomas award, they are “saving face” and perhaps enhancing the reputation of the university. I suggest rather that they have irreparably diminished the value of a degree in journalism from WSU by their clear failure to uphold freedom of speech – the very foundation of any journalism curriculum.
Others may condemn Helen Thomas for her opinion and her politics – as many have. But a public institution of higher learning – a forum for ideas of all stripes, in particular a school of journalism – is ill-advised to condemn her right to that opinion and her right to express it.
In 1964 (the same year I received my journalism degree from WSU) Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote, in New York Times v. Sullivan, of America’s First-Amendment “commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” Even false statements, Justice Brennan wrote, “must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the breathing space that they need … to survive.”
The reasoning behind WSU’s decision to no longer offer the Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity in the Media award sends a mixed message to its students – especially journalism students – that the values instilled in them over four years of education are both flexible and expendable; that freedom of speech and of the press is not a foundation, set in stone, upon which life in America is based, but rather merely a suggestion to be taken if it suits you, or left behind when it becomes inconvenient or embarrassing.
I have urged officials of WSU to reconsider what they have done, and to apologize to Helen Thomas, of course, but, more importantly, to the Wayne State University students and alumni who expected better of them.
LLOYD H WESTON
Newspaper Editor and Publisher (Ret.)
Member, Chicago Headline Club