More research is needed. Anchoring? How about Burlington, Vermont and Oklahoma City? She anchored in both.

The Morrow was national. Check it out.

No, Barbara West was not a household name outside Central Florida, but perhaps it is now.

Why?

For one simple reason. She “dared” to ask the questions other reporters should have been asking for months.

Some thought the questions were far fetched or biased. Why would she ask about Senator Obama’s plans and their closeness to Marxism? It was very simple. Barbara’s own research uncovered that Obama wrote in his book that while in college, he liked to be close to what Obama himself called Marxist professors. Generally, one learns Marxist ideas from Marxist professors.

Obama’s own written words; not hers.

Barbara’s friend Sam Dolandson once said that “When interview subjects don’t like the questions, they often call them biased.” Sam said, “In reality, they can’t object to the questions. What they object to are their own answers.”

Rather than trying to object to Barbara’s work, perhaps you might look into why no other reporter dug deep enough to ask those questions…. the questions most readers/listeners/viewers wanted answered.

Make “42 American hostages” read “52 American hostages.”

Thank you.

I also worked at an Amarillo station that competed with Jim’s. In fact, I worked at Barbara’s station. In fact, I am rather familiar with Barbara West’s work, as I am her husband.

In his article supposedly condemning Barbara’s bias in her interview of Senator Biden, Jim Blue displayed his own bias. More importantly, he displayed his inability to get the facts right.

For example, in an attempt to belittle her, he wrote of our time together in Amarillo, “It was her first anchor job. Prior to that, her biggest claim to fame was representing Vermont in the Miss America Pageant.”

Sorry, Jim, wrong. Very wrong.

Barbara began on-camera work in television news in the 1970s. When Peter Jennings anchored ABC World news every night from London while the 42 American hostages were held captive in Tehran, Barbara was there with him, getting the story right, and getting it right now! When Jim’s network reported that the hostages had been freed and left Iranian airspace, Barbara was there working with a Farsi-speaking woman, talking on the phone with the air traffic controller in Tehran and reporting that they were still captive in Iran.

She also helped cover the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, another huge story in its time.

Covering 444 days of “America Held Hostage” working for Peter Jennings is one thing more than anything else; it’s incredible experience in good journalism.

Mr. Blue goes on to write “From that small market on the arid Texas plains, West landed a spot anchoring in Orlando. She worked for years at the ABC affiliate, attracting little notice outside Central Florida. But now she’s really in the national spotlight.”

Again, a little fact-checking, something taught in Journalism 101, would have helped his story quite a bit.

For example, Barbara has collected a number of Emmy awards for her work. She also received the most prestigious award in broadcast journalism, the Edward R. Morrow Award. He health reports were seen throughout the country. She was the only Florida reporter to get a number of critical interviews while covering the Monica Lewinski matter. Her ratings are consistently higher than the other two stations during her newscasts, combined!

She was the ONLY Western reporter to get into the then-working control room in Chernobyl on the tenth anniversary of the disaster there.

The Edward R. Morrow Award, Monicagate, Chernobyl; I’d call that being noticed outside Central Florida!

Mr. Blue calls for more hard news reporting and less bias. Perhaps if he did some basic fact-checking and removed his own bias from his writing, he could begin to meet the standards he calls for in others.