Abstract
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.
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