Thomas Whiteside (April 21, 1918 – October 10, 1997) was an American journalist. Born in Berwick-Upon-Tweed, he lived in Toronto, Canada before moving to the United States in 1940. Whiteside studied at the University of Chicago. During World War II, he worked for the Office of War Propaganda, compiling reports on Axis propaganda. His work appeared in Newsweek, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. Whiteside was instrumental in publicizing the damage of Agent Orange. According to Senator Hart, Whiteside's reporting on Agent Orange was the catalyst for the Congressional hearings regarding the chemical. By the end of the hearings, the Surgeon General had announced restrictions on its use, both domestically and in Vietnam. He led the charge in other revealing reporting, such as on the change in the tomato plant; his January 16, 1977 article on Tomatoes led to a Washington Post article for the broader public about ethylene gas being used on tomatoes sold to grocery stores to simulate ripening. His report covering the police violence against journalists and anti-war demonstrators alike at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago continues to be relevant to reporters putting themselves in harm's way to tell the public not present at an event what truly happened. He died in West Cornwall, Connecticut on October 10, 1997.

Awards

Works

Most of Whiteside's published books are non-fiction works, with an activism focus. He does have one science fiction work, however: Alone Through the Dark Sea.

Published books

New Yorker articles

Columbia Journalism Review

Unpublished papers

Columbia University Libraries has a collection of papers once belonging to Whiteside. The bulk of it is professional in nature: research, photographs, and notes for his articles and books. There are, however, personal papers, dating from 1940 through 1995 as well.