Tribute to Helen Thomas

The 88-year-old Helen Thomas decennia long defender of democracy has covered every President since John F. Kennedy. She was the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents Association. She has a reserved seat in the center of the front row, with her name on it. Her laconic approach, I pay them as taxpayer, so the President has to answer my questions.

When at Obama’s first press conference she questioned whether he could name a country in the Middle East that had a nuclear arsenal, Obama neglected the question and went on.

“The legendary journalist and bestselling author, Helen Thomas, delivers a hard-hitting manifesto on the precipitous decline in the quality and ethics of political reportage—and issues a clarion call for change. In the course of more than sixty years spent covering Washington politics, Helen Thomas has witnessed firsthand a raft of fundamental changes in the way news is gathered and reported. Gone are the days of flying in Air Force One with JFK, as she once did. Now, Thomas sees a growing—and alarming—reluctance among reporters to question the government and probe for the truth. The result has been a wholesale failure by journalists to fulfil what is arguably their most vital role in contemporary American life—to be the watchdogs of democracy. Today’s journalists, to hear Thomas tell it, have become subdued, compromised lapdogs”.
http://www.helenthomas.org/

Recently interviewed she was asked to name the best and worst President she had served, her response was without hesitation the best JF Kennedy and the worst George W. Bush. We in Europe do agree with her.

In November 1960, Thomas began covering then President-elect John F. Kennedy, following him to the White House in January 1961 as a UPI correspondent. Thomas became known as the "Sitting Buddha", and it was during Kennedy's administration that she began the tradition of ending all presidential press conferences with a signature "Thank you, Mr. President".

“Thomas was the only female print journalist to travel with President Richard 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 since 1975, working up to the position of UPI's White House Bureau Chief, a post she would hold for over twenty-five years. While serving as White House Bureau Chief, she authored a regular column for UPI, "Backstairs at the White House," which provided an insider's view of various presidential administrations”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Thomas