Helen Thomas

President George W. Bush conveys birthday wishes to reporter Helen Thomas in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.

Helen Thomas (born August 4, 1920) is a noted news service reporter, a Hearst Newspapers columnist, and member of the White House Press Corps. She served for fifty-seven years as a correspondent and White House bureau chief for United Press International (UPI). Thomas has covered every president since John F. Kennedy, was the first woman officer of the National Press Club, was the first woman member and president of the White House Correspondents Association, and the first woman member of the Gridiron Club. She has written four books, including her latest, Watchdogs of Democracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public.

Early life and career

Thomas was born in Winchester, Kentucky to Lebanese immigrants. She was raised in Detroit, Michigan and attended Wayne University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1942. Thomas' first job in journalism was as a copygirl for the now-defunct Washington Daily News, but shortly after she was promoted to cub reporter she was laid off as part of massive cutbacks at the paper.

Thomas joined UPI in 1943 where she wrote news on women's topics for their radio wire service. Later in the decade she wrote their "Names in the News" column, and after 1955 she covered federal agencies such as the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Thomas served as president of the Women's National Press Club 1959–60.

Presidential correspondent

In November, 1960, Helen began covering then President-elect John F. Kennedy, following him to the White House in January 1961 as a UPI correspondent. During this assignment, Thomas became known as the Sitting Buddha and closed presidential press conferences with the tagline "Thank you, Mr. President."

Thomas was the only female print journalist to travel with President Richard M. Nixon to China during his historic trip in 1972. She has traveled around the world several times with Presidents Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, and has covered every Economic Summit.

She later became White House Bureau Chief for UPI, where she was employed until her resignation on May 17, 2000. At this time, UPI was acquired by News World Communications, which owns The Washington Times; Thomas has responded to allegations that she quit because of the conservative record of the Times by offering that News World Communications has ties to Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.[1] Thomas then became a White House correspondent and a columnist for King Features Syndicate (Hearst Corporation).

Bush administration

Traditionally, Thomas sat in the front row and asked the first question during White House press conferences, but according to Helen Thomas in a 2006 Daily Show interview, this ended because she no longer represents a wire service. Thomas has since been moved to the back row during press conferences, although she still sits in the front row during press briefings. She is called upon at briefings on a daily basis but no longer ends Presidential news conferences saying "Thank you, Mr. President." Asked why she is now seated in the back row, she said, "Because they don't like me... I ask too mean questions." [2]

On March 21, 2006, Thomas was called upon directly by President Bush for the first time in three years. Thomas asked Bush about Iraq:

I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet -- your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth -- what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil -- quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?

Bush responded by discussing the overall War on Terror, and stated as a reason for the invasion, that Saddam Hussein chose to deny inspectors and not to disclose.[3] Thomas was criticized by conservative commentators for her exchange with Bush. Thomas was not criticized by liberal commentators because Thomas has an alarming amount of media bias for a person who held herself out for decades as a journalist.[4]

Thomas has publicly expressed her opinion about President Bush. After a speech at a Society of Professional Journalists banquet, she told an autograph seeker who asked why she was sad, "I'm covering the worst president in American history." The autograph seeker was a sports writer for the Daily Breeze and her comments were published. After she was not called upon during a press conference for the first time in over four decades, she wrote to the president to apologize. She also told The Hill "The day Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself. All we need is another liar... I think he'd like to run, but it would be a sad day for the country if he does."

At a student journalism conference hosted by the Center for American Progress on June 2, 2006, Thomas lambasted journalists who, according to her, did not give accurate, critical reports on the Iraq War. She said she hopes for the return of hard reporting, and that the student audience should be "out on the street" in protest instead of sitting in the conference room.

At the July 18, 2006 White House press briefing, Thomas remarked, "The United States is not that helpless. It could have stopped the bombardment of Lebanon. We have that much control with the Israelis...we have gone for collective punishment against all of Lebanon and Palestine." Press Secretary Tony Snow responded, "Thank you for the Hezbollah view." [5]

Awards

• In November 1976, Thomas was named one of the "25 Most Influential Women in America" by the World Almanac.
• In 1986, Thomas was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
• In 1989, The Missouri School of Journalism awarded Thomas its Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism
• In 1998, she received the International Women's Media Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award
• Also in 1998, she was the first recipient of a prize established in her name by the White House Correspondents Association - the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award
• In 2003, she was given an Intrepid Award by the National Organization for Women [6]
• On May 25, 2006, Thomas was inducted into the Michigan Walk of Fame in downtown Lansing, Michigan.[7]
• On May 20, 2007, Thomas received a honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Siena College in Loudonville, NY for her contributions to breaking the gender barrier in journalism.

Trivia

• Her niece, Suzanne Geha, is an anchor at WOOD-TV the NBC television station in Grand Rapids, Michigan
• Thomas had a cameo in the 1993 movie Dave.
• Rush Limbaugh declared Thomas "Our Woman in Washington" after an incident in which a reporter asked Bill Clinton, "Are you mad at Panetta?", and when he said "What for?", Thomas shouted out, "Because everything's going down the drain... is that true?" Limbaugh augmented the soundbite "Everything's going down the drain" and used it repeatedly on his program. She later asked a White House official, "Is everything going down the drain?" Limbaugh reaffirmed her position as "Our Woman in Washington" when his anonymous correspondent, "Our Man in Washington" got kicked out of a press conference and she came to his aid.
• The Final Days, President Clinton's 2000 parody of his own waning term of office, features Thomas among other pundits and White House staffers. Clinton makes a major policy speech to the White House press corps only to find the briefing room empty except for a snoozing Thomas who, awakened, impatiently asks him, "Are you still here?" (Complete clip: [8])
• Thomas was featured in the "audition tape" made by Stephen Colbert for the position of Press Secretary. The segment was shown after Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. After Colbert deflects a number of questions from other journalists, Thomas begins asking her question regarding the Iraq war. This sends a panicked Stephen to the streets, where he is stalked by Thomas all the way to New York City. Widely distributed online, a portion of the clip later aired on his show The Colbert Report on Comedy Central on 2006-05-02. Complete Clip Links: Part 1Part 2

Bibliography

• Watchdogs of Democracy? : The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public (Scribner, 2006) ISBN 0-7432-6781-8
• Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President : Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row at the White House (Scribner, 2003) ISBN 0-7432-0226-0
• Front Row at the White House : My Life and Times (Scribner, 2000) ISBN 0-684-86809-1
• Dateline: White House (MacMillan, 1975) ISBN 0-02-617620-3

External links

• Helen Thomas at IMDb
• "Truth, Fear and War", speech by Thomas, September 13, 2003.
• "Calling Helen Thomas" in Saudi Aramco World (Vol. 57, No. 2), which discusses Thomas impact on younger Arab-American journalists.
• Helen Thomas confronts Washington officials on the legality of wire tapping