Film Covers Career of DC Correspondent Helen Thomas
In “Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House,” a documentary that airs tonight on HBO, the 88-year-old journalism icon remembers how a family friend called her inquisitive after being peppered with questions by the little girl.
Thomas didn’t know what that meant, so her older sister explained, “You’re curious and you better stop asking those questions.”
The advice didn’t stick.
Thomas, who grew up in Detroit, has been asking presidents the tough questions for half a century. She’s covered nine occupants of the Oval Office and, more often than not, managed to ask something that puts them on the spot.
“The thing about Helen is she’s asking the questions that we the public want to know the answers to,” says the film’s director, Rory Kennedy, a niece of John F. Kennedy (the first president Thomas covered) and the youngest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy.
“If nobody is asking those questions, we don’t get the answers. These journalists are in a position to hold the president accountable. When they don’t do their job or when the White House doesn’t respond to those questions, it, I think, limits our democracy in ways that are scary.”
Thomas is recovering from a colon infection that has sidelined her since May. In a recent e-mail interview with the Free Press, she said, “I hope to return to work sooner, rather than later — and I am feeling better!”
Using clips and candid interviews with Thomas, the film covers her lengthy career as a White House correspondent for UPI and, later, after leaving the wire service in 2000, as a Hearst columnist.
It opens with Thomas confronting President George W. Bush and asking him why he really wanted to go to war — the type of query that’s made her, as she describes in the documentary, persona non grata with his administration.
“When George Bush first became president, I think I attended two or three news conferences with him, and then I did get another question in, and there’s a blackout now, I believe, until the end of his term,” she says in the film.
Later on, she’s shown trying to pin down Bill Clinton on the nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. As Thomas carefully frames her words, the expression on Clinton’s face is briefly that of a deer caught in the headlights.
“I think that presidents deserve to be questioned, maybe irreverently most of the time,” she says at one point. “Bring ’em down a size.”
Thomas, who was born in Kentucky, also talks about her early years in Detroit. Her mother and father immigrated to America from the Syrian town Tripoli that later became part of Lebanon. Although they couldn’t read or write, they had a sense of justice matched by a strong desire to educate their children.
Thomas, a graduate of Wayne State University, knew she wanted to do big things.
“I never had any idea I would go to the White House, but I certainly wanted to cover history and not fires in Detroit,” she reveals in the film.
She joined UPI in 1943 and began covering presidents in the early 1960s. Back then, the White House beat was a male-dominated profession that abided by a gentlemen’s agreement not to pry too much into a president’s private life.
Devoted to her work, Thomas eventually became the dean of the White House press corps. She was the first woman to open a presidential press conference and to conclude one with the traditional, “Thank you, Mr. President.”
The film offers a treasure trove of footage of Thomas grilling various presidents, but it also includes her warm personal encounters with the first families.
In one clip, Clinton surprises her with a birthday cake. Another shows Pat Nixon breaking the news of Thomas’ engagement to retiring White House correspondent Douglas Cornell at a reception in his honor. Thomas wed Cornell, now deceased, in 1971.
There are anecdotes about Lyndon Johnson’s habit of walking around the White House South Lawn with reporters and thwarting their attempts to hear him by talking in a whisper. Thomas recalls how female correspondents had to trudge after LBJ in uncomfortable shoes with high heels and pointy toes.
And there’s a telling moment where Richard Nixon congratulates her at a press conference on becoming the UPI White House bureau chief and Thomas proceeds to hit him with a tough Watergate question.
“There’s so many stories about her just asking the hard questions even in the face of social awkwardness or rebuke or whatever it’s going to be,” says Kennedy, a veteran filmmaker.
In an e-mail interview, Thomas sounds as devoted as ever to her role as a watchdog of democracy.
Asked which president she’d feel most comfortable having a beer with, she responded, “I don’t drink beer. But I do love a good conversation with presidents or potential presidents. All I ask is that they know right from wrong and realize they are public servants — we pay them.”
Her opinions on how history will view the press coverage of the Iraq war are just as blunt.
“I think the media has let the country down because our role is to search for the truth. There is no question our leaders betrayed the American people by not giving truthful answers about why we were going to war.”
The film does make reference to some criticism Thomas has received for her encounters with the current Bush administration. But it firmly supports her right be a thorn in any president’s side.
Kennedy thinks the next person in the White House will return to the habit of calling on Thomas and facing her scrutiny.
“You go to the press office and it’s ABC, CBS, NBC, Helen Thomas, CNN. She’s the only one with her name on there. She really is an institution,” says Kennedy. “I think whether it’s John McCain or Obama, they’re going to talk to Helen Thomas. I think they’re both much more accessible and available than the current president is.
JULIE HINDS
Detroit Free Press