(JTA) — The executive committee of the Society of Professional Journalists has recommended that the organization retire a lifetime achievement award named for Helen Thomas.
The recommendation issued Jan. 8 by the national journalists’ group, based on anti-Zionist remarks made by Thomas, will be sent to its board of directors within 10 days.
“While we support Helen Thomas’ right to speak her opinion, we condemn her statements in December as offensive and inappropriate,” the executive committee said in making its recommendation.
On Dec. 2, in a speech to an Arab-American group in Dearborn, Mich., Thomas, 90, said that Congress, the White House, Hollywood and Wall Street “are owned by the Zionists.” The remarks raised fresh concerns about the sincerity of an apology for her remarks last summer to a video blogger that Jews “should get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland, Germany and the United States.
The Society of Professional Journalists decided not to change the name of its Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award after those remarks by the 67-year-veteran of Washington reporting, who resigned shortly after from her job as a columnist at Hearst.
“This is a complex issue, and the executive committee considered comments and letters from both sides," the society’s president, Hagit Limor, said following the Jan. 8 vote. "Because of the importance of this decision, it is appropriate to put this before the full board.”
The Society for Professional Journalists, established in 1909, granted Thomas its first lifetime achievement honor in 2000, and pledged to name subsequent awards for her. It has been awarded nine times since its debut. The award has no cash value.
Thomas told the Washington Jewish Week on Sunday that the journalists’ group "dishonored and disgraced the First Amendment" by its board’s decision.
"How can you take away anyone’s lifetime achievement award?" she told the newspaper. " What right do they have to do that?"
Limor pointed out that the society wasn’t revoking Thomas’ award in 2000; rather, the committee was recommending that Thomas’ name be dropped from future lifetime achievement awards.
"Helen Thomas brought shame to the journalism profession; the Society of Professional Journalists restored its honor," Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, said in a statement released Sunday.
Wayne State University, Thomas’ alma mater, immediately withdrew its Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity in the Media Award, following her resignation.
Thomas, born to Lebanese immigrants, for decades was the White House correspondent for the United Press International wire service. She recently began writing a column for a free Virginia weekly newspaper, the Falls Church News-Press.
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