-By Warner Todd Huston
I don’t know… I don’t feel that dangerous. But, gee, I guess I am? Well I might be, at least according to Helen Thomas, one of the most uncivil “reporters” in all of journalism. Apparently she has proclaimed that citizen journalists and bloggers are “dangerous” on a HufPo blog of Dec. 4th. HufPoster Seema Kalia reported an exchange with the equine visaged Thomas where she raised alarm over her fear of the common American citizen and that terribly annoying Internet thingie. Yes, folks she thinks that if you are a blogger or Internet writer you have no sense of “ethics” and you are “Dangerous.” One wonders if she really knows any journalists at all if she thinks they show any sign of “ethics”?
Seema Kalia, relied on Thomas for her first entry in a proposed series titled “My favorite mistake” in which folks Kalia deems worthy of her focus will recount the mistake that “taught them the most.” Ostensibly this little foray into feels-goodism is meant to “teach” us all something it appears. Unfortunately for Kalia, Thomas miserably fails to give the entry any pop psychological umphf for her fist little attempt. It seems that the woman who is constantly badgering government officials to admit their mistakes has proclaimed that she, herself, has been entirely perfect since she began her career some time in the late Pleistocene period.
Helen Thomas: I don’t have any mistakes to tell you about.
No? Nothing? Not even her sense of fashion is a mistake? At least as far as she is here to tell you, anyway.
But, while the interview fails to perform to the stated purpose of making us all warm and gushy inside because our favorite personages can admit that they are fallible, it does succeed at one thing. It is a wonderful showcase of Thomas’s arrogance along with her hyper sense of paranoia.
After telling us she has never made a mistake, Thomas goes on to suspect a HufPo blogger of trying to make her look bad. Kalia tries to explain the purpose of the article to the aged scribe. “The spirit of this interview is really to explore the role of mistake-making as part of the growth of people who are really successful at what they do,” Kalia says. But Thomas is having none of it. “No, no, no…you’re looking for something else; you want people to flagellate themselves,” she suspiciously replies. To which our sycophantic HufPoster assures her that, “There are many people I’d like to see flagellated in Washington, but you are not among them.”
Of course, most of the interview is meaningless jabber, but one short exchange from this leading figure of the fossilized media establishment does reveal the same sort of arrogance that we chronicle here every day.
After Kalia discusses reporter’s mistakes she asks Thomas about the new media.
Kalia: Do you think technology is changing that? That a good reporter will always find a venue because there are so many media outlets now?
Thomas: No, but I do think it is kind of sad when everybody who owns a laptop thinks they’re a journalist and doesn’t understand the ethics. We do have to have some sense of what’s right and wrong in this job. Of how far we can go. We don’t make accusations without absolute proof. We’re not prosecutors. We don’t assume.
Kalia: So if there’s this amateur league of journalists out there, trying to do what you do…
Thomas: It’s dangerous.
There you have it folks. YOU have no ethics… and coming from one such as Thomas that really means something. I guess we can’t even use those wretched laptops to look the word up on Wikpedia, huh?
So, let me take a moment to revel in my “dangerousness.”
OK, I’m done for now. But I’ll have to warm my pusillanimous ‘puter up to find some more trouble later, though.
In any case, this is precisely the sort of attitude on the part of the old media that has driven their market share to an ever dwindling number of customers over the past 10 years. The arrogance that Thomas displays against you, the average American, is palpable. Even CBS News blogger Matthew Felling was a bit amused by this business on his Public Eye blog post of Dec. 6th.
Felling joked that Thomas wasn’t at all going for the everyman as a journalist theory. (Emphasis in original)
Well, not that it should come as too much of a surprise, but old school White House scribe Helen Thomas isn’t drinking that “everybody’s a journalist!” kool-aid.
So, you untrained, ethically confused bloggers should give up the notion that you could be in any such exalted position as being considered a “journalist.” You should leave the real writing to the professionals, doncha know? After all, you wouldn’t want to be “dangerous” now would you?
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
Gosh-a-rooney Mr. Publius – Is there a chance I could be labeled as dangerous because I’ve commented on some of your postings? – Is there no hope?
I know I’m ethically confused and because I am that doesn’t bother me too much. Sort of a Catch-22. Part of the ‘Vast Right Wing Conspiracy’ agenda clearly states, “No Ethics!”. To continue carrying my card it is demanded that I not have ethics.
But dangerous! Can’t a person be thrown into jail for that?
I’m off to delete my blog before they get wise to me!
Elitist journalists don’t like having pamphleteers holding their feet to the fire or calling attention to their mistakes.