White House journalism bulldog
HELEN THOMAS 1921-2013 Reporter pushed open doors for women
Helen Thomas, the irrepressible White House correspondent who used her seat in the front row of history to grill 10 U.S. presidents — often to their discomfort — and was not shy about sharing her opinions, died July 20. She was 92.
Thomas died surrounded by family and friends at her Washington apartment, the family said in a statement. A friend, Muriel Dobbin, told The Associated Press that Thomas had been ill for a long time, and in and out of hospital before coming home two days before her death.
Thomas made her name as a bulldog for United Press International in the great wire-service rivalries of old, and as a pioneer for women in journalism.
She was persistent to the point of badgering. One White House press secretary described her questioning as “torture” — and he was one of her fans.
Her refusal to conceal her strong opinions, even when posing questions to a president, and her public hostility toward Israel, caused discomfort among colleagues.
In 2010, that tendency finally ended a career that started in 1943 and made her one of the best-known journalists in Washington. On a videotape circulated on the Internet, Thomas, whose parents were Lebanese immigrants, said Israelis should “get out of Palestine” and “go home” to Germany, Poland or the United States. The remark brought widespread condemnation and she ended her career.
In January 2011, she became a columnist for a free weekly paper in a Washington suburb, months after the controversy forced her from her previous post.
“What made Helen the ‘dean of the White House Press Corps’ was not just the length of her tenure, but her fierce belief that our democracy works best when we ask tough questions and hold our leaders to account,” U.S. President Barack Obama, the last president she covered, said in a statement July 20.
In her long career, she was indelibly associated with the ritual ending White House news conferences. She was often the one to deliver the closing line, “Thank you, Mister President” — four polite words that belied a fierce competitive streak.
Her disdain for White House secrecy and dodging spanned five decades, back to president John F. Kennedy. Her freedom to voice her peppery opinions as a speaker and a Hearst columnist came late in her career.
The Bush administration marginalized her, clearly peeved with a journalist who had challenged president George W. Bush to his face on the Iraq war and declared him the worst president in history.
After she quit UPI in 2000 — by then an outsized figure in a shrunk organization — her influence waned.
Thomas was accustomed to getting under the skin of presidents, if not to the cold shoulder.
“If you want to be loved,” she said years earlier, “go into something else.”
There was a lighter mood in August 2009, on her 89th birthday, when Obama popped into the White House briefing room unannounced. He led the roomful of reporters in singing Happy Birthday to You and gave her cupcakes. As it happened, it was the president’s birthday too, his 48th.
Thomas was at the forefront of women’s achievements in journalism. She was one of the first female reporters to break out of the White House “women’s beat” — the soft stories about presidents’ kids, wives, their teas and their hairdos — and cover the hard news on an equal footing with men.
She became the first female White House bureau chief for a wire service when UPI named her to the position in 1974. She was also the first female officer at the National Press Club, where women had once been barred as members and she had to fight for admission into the 1959 luncheon speech where Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev warned, “We will bury you.”
The belligerent Khrushchev was an unlikely ally in one sense. He had refused to speak at any Washington venue that excluded women, she said.
She also pushed open the doors for women at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. At her urging, Kennedy refused to attend the 1962 dinner unless it was open to women for the first time. The tactic worked. More than a decade later, Thomas was the first woman to serve as the association’s president.
“Women and men who’ve followed in the press corps all owe a debt of gratitude for the work Helen did and the doors she opened,” said Steven Thomma, the association’s current president.