Elizabeth Blanks Hindman and Ryan J. Thomas published April 18, 2013:
Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas abruptly retired in summer 2010 after she gave unscripted remarks widely perceived to be anti-Semitic. This case study applies paradigm repair and attribution theories to explore how mainstream journalists repaired the damage to their profession’s reputation. It concludes that they (1) situated Thomas’s remark against a backdrop of journalistic excellence, subtly reinforcing the point that her career should now come to an end; (2) suggested Thomas’s remarks were caused by senility; (3) condemned her remarks as racist; and (4) raised the norm of objectivity.
On June 7, 2010, the career of veteran journalist Helen Thomas, who had covered the White House since the days of President Dwight Eisenhower, came to an abrupt and ignominious end. The previous month, she had been interviewed on camera by New York rabbi David Nesenoff, who asked if she had any “comments on Israel,” to which Thomas responded, “tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.” When Nesenoff asked if she had “any better comments on Israel,” Thomas replied that “they” (Jews) should “go home” to “Poland, Germany . . . and America and everywhere else.” The interview was posted to the rabbi’s website, RabbiLive.com, on June 3 and quickly attracted media attention and comment. Thomas’s speakers agency, Nine Speakers, Inc., dropped her,2 and her comments were condemned by the White House Correspondents’ Association,3 the Society of Professional Journalists,4 and President Barack Obama, who said her comments were “offensive” and “out of line.”5 On June 7, Thomas announced her resignation from her position as an opinion columnist with Hearst Newspapers and her retirement from journalism effective immediately.6 In her statement, she apologized for her comments, saying they did “not reflect [her] heartfelt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance.”7 However, her sixty-year career covering presidential politics was officially over…
To retain good standing within “a group with systematic relations,”10 members must function in accordance with the normative behaviors and standards of the paradigm.
Furthermore, such behaviors become unassailable, for the paradigm “restrict[s] the range of questions deemed appropriate for study,” rendering paradigms as hegemonic. However, they are not impervious; for Kuhn, a paradigm “fails” when the fundamental assumptions on which it is built come into question and are found to be inadequate.
As members of the journalistic paradigm, journalists can be said to be an “interpretive community,” policing their profession and defining, shaping, and reinforcing its norms, values, standards, and practices.
