Letters: Helen Thomas’ journalistic legacy

Re “The real Helen Thomas,” Opinion, July 23

Jonah Goldberg has sunk to a new low with his column on the late White House correspondent Helen Thomas.

I was a journalism student at Long Island University from 1954 to 1958. There were two women out of the roughly 25 students in my journalism class. I worked at the New York Herald Tribune during my senior year. There was one woman journalist in the city room, and she covered women’s news. I served in the Army as the base journalist at the Women’s Army Corps Training Center in 1959 and 1960. It wasn’t because I was girlish. There just weren’t female journalists in the Army.

The truth is that Thomas helped break down the barriers for women because she was a dedicated, talented and determined journalist.

Bob Fisher

Encinitas

Thomas’ anti-Semitic statements that Jews should leave Israel and return to Germany, Poland and the United States ignored the fact that up to 1 million Jewish refugees fled to Israel after being forced out of Arab countries. Would she have suggested returning them to their original homes and having their possessions restored, especially since their descendants now total in the millions?

These are refugees forgotten by the world because Israel absorbed them and didn’t force them into camps to fester for generations, as the Arab nations did to the Palestinians.

I cannot see Thomas as an “inspiration.” Her statements were an expression of her biased thinking, which must have affected her reporting of the news.

Unfortunately, the public assumed her journalism to be “unbiased” rather than her own filtered version of what actually happened.

Mark Reichard

Torrance

Thomas’ remarkable, decades-long career shines even brighter after reading the tunnel-vision rant by Goldberg.

Thank you, Helen Thomas, for a job well done.

Marla J. Sheehan

Fullerton

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