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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Dean of White House reporters quits after Israel remark

By: Lee-Anne Goodman

Posted: 06/8/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

WASHINGTON -- The grand dame of the White House press corps resigned on Monday, an elderly dean of journalism's old school felled not only by her own controversial remarks about Israel, but also by the YouTube-era technology that ensured those comments spread with lightning speed.

Helen Thomas, 89, quit Hearst News after years in the front-and-centre seat at the daily White House press briefing, querying press secretaries as they defended everyone from Richard Nixon during the Watergate years, Bill Clinton amid his sex-scandal troubles and George W. Bush following the invasion of Iraq.

At a recent White House event celebrating Jewish heritage, Thomas was captured on videotape saying Israelis should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go back home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else."

She made the comments during an impromptu interview with a group called RabbiLive.com. The video appeared on the group's website and ended up on YouTube, where it's amassed more than a million hits in four days.

Thomas, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, has since apologized for the remarks, but they resulted in a shocking end to a career that had lost none of its spark despite her advancing years.

In her time as a respected reporter for United Press International who covered the White House since the JFK administration, and then a columnist for Hearst News, Thomas was also a feminist pioneer.

She was the first female president of the White House Correspondents' Association and the first female officer of the National Press Club. And in a profession that often values looks, flash and youth over journalistic bona fides, the sight of an elderly woman peppering various administrations with difficult questions was endlessly inspiring to female reporters in particular.

In April, Thomas discussed her battles trying to have women included in the National Press Club, which did not admit female members until the early 1970s.

"They had some real Neanderthals in the club who thought that women should not be there," she said. "It was really a struggle. But the feminist movement, everything helped, and we fought, and they finally, I think, felt really ashamed of themselves."

In recent years, Thomas would occasionally appear to be nodding off during the daily, hour-long White House press briefings.

But as recently as last week, she bitterly challenged press secretary Robert Gibbs about the Obama administration's response to the deadly Israeli raid of a pro-Palestine aid flotilla two days earlier. Her line of questioning made plain her feelings on the issue and came a few days after she'd made her career-ending comments -- but before they'd been widely disseminated on the Internet.

"The initial reaction to the flotilla massacre, deliberate massacre, an international crime, was pitiful," she told Gibbs.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 8, 2010 A12

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