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Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Another "Macaca" moment? Not for Helen Thomas.

Another "Oh, that biased media" moment: 
Another "Macaca" moment, but infinitely worse, and actually bigoted? Not a chance, if the Post can help it.

Remember "Macaca?"  The racial slur that no had ever heard of, that no one ever knew?  The one that the Washington Post used to brand George Allen a racist and sink his election?  The remark that appeared on the Washington Post over 131 times.

Following the Macaca video, the Post ran no fewer than 131 articles on Allen’s slur. Thirteen of the articles slammed Allen on the front page, and 34 were in the national section or on the main editorial page.

If you read the Washington Post today there would be scant mention of a remark that, compared to Macaca, is a nuclear bomb compared to a 4th of July sparkler. 

From Pajamas Media
It is day four of the Helen Thomas saga. The 89-year-old White House doyen, adored by Washington’s liberal mainstream media, told a Jewish rabbi in a video that Jews must “get the hell out of Palestine” and must “go home” to Germany and Poland.



The issue has been raging since Thomas’ ugly comments were released on Friday by RabbiLive.com. Ironically, Thomas made her remarks at a White House Jewish Heritage Month observance.



Meanwhile, over at the Washington Post, there is near silence. As of the this writing, searching “Helen Thomas site:washingtonpost.com” on Google brings up two articles on Thomas being dropped as a commencement speaker at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, a Howard Kurtz piece mentioning her remarks, and a post debating if Hearst will drop Thomas as a journalist.



Otherwise, the Post, which prides itself since the days of Watergate as being the “political” paper of record, is dark.

So what's the problem with the Post being in the Hamas corner?
The media watchdog organization CAMERA has long critiqued the Post for feeding anti-Israel bias. They reported 25 major instances in 2009.

In the wake of the global anti-Semitic blasts of the past week, the Post’s continuing near-silence about the anti-Semitic views of the White House’s leading liberal columnist only aids and abets hatred and bigotry.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Meanwhile the Virginian Pilot focuses on the REAL outrage: a Virginia Beach council member using official stationery to write a letter to New Yorkers objection to the Cordoba mosque.  It has been a multi-day story leading to an outraged editorial and a column by Kerry Dougherty.  The Thomas remarks come at the end of a hagiographic smooch in an AP reprint.

I, for one, welcome our Muslim overlords.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So the 2,044 results from that search now (8:36 June 8) don't count? Are those of you who parrot notions about media bias actually constructing time-based graphs, and even attempting some kind of objective measure? Or are you just citing whatever factoids or snapshot fits your own bias? I'm guessing the latter.

Moneyrunner said...

You will note, won't you, that most of the articles still refer to her as an icon, simply regretting that this has come out.

Then there's comments like this:

Israel is run by a bunch of war criminals just like the US government. The corporate news along with the politicians are sell outs to the Israeli elite ... it's no secret Israel has control over the high offices in US government ... so when someone like Thomas speaks the truth, corporate news and the war criminals pretend she has committed some horrendous crime. These war criminals may control the media and the government, but they can't hide from or dismiss the truth. Bravo Ms. Thomas. You are a true journalists, unlike the paid shills pretending to be journalists. They are not fooling the people that get the real news from the internet.

Posted by: spirittoo | June 8, 2010 12:09 PM


And this:

Helen's comment was a "spur of the moment' she knows more than any of us about such things. I do not think she should retire,as we all say things without thinking of the problem that it might come.Embarrassment of the White House, probably is the biggest to-do. Many of us agree on many comments from correspondence,reporters, etc. I fully say "DITTO" to rgdebnam @10:27 as I agree with her remark. Helen has her reasons, I do not. I do not agree with everything we do but I say "lets not make a big whopping to-do about nothing" !! Helen, we love you and I understand. I am always putting my foot in my mouth too !! Those without guilt raise you hand !! Thanks bh

For an objective measure, let's see how much the Washington Post examines the issue of anti-Semitism in the press and the rest of the media. Would you agree that we need a conversation about this? If an "icon" like Helen Thomas can hold such despicable views and people are willing to come on-line to agree with her, this needs a thorough airing. Which, I can confidently predict, will not happen in the Washington Post.