Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz wrote Monday that Helen Thomas could have spared herself an embarrassing quick retirement if her media colleagues had “gently suggested” it was time to go. He said the press corps saw her as an “eccentric aunt,” but he claimed most of the country never saw her as cranky and ideological:
But that's not how she was seen by much of the country, which still viewed her as the groundbreaking correspondent she once was, not the cranky columnist she had become. So when Aunt Helen snapped that Israelis should "get the hell out of Palestine" -- and go back to Germany, among other places -- many onlookers were stunned.
Any onlooker who was stunned wasn't in the habit of watching White House briefings – or reading how media watchdog groups (ahem) routinely recounted Helen's rants. Kurtz noted that journalists went soft on a colleague because they usually stay together in a pack, but didn't quite note that journalists shared the vigorously anti-Bush/Cheney viewpoint Thomas offered:
Journalists, especially those who spend a great deal of time together, don't usually turn on each other. If Thomas was spewing bias and bile, the reasoning went, what was the harm?
Kurtz acknowledged the reality that few journalists actually read her Hearst column, and she was never known as a great writer or notable breaker of scoops. But her columnist phase seemed to cloud her earlier reputation from her "choice bit of real estate" in the front row seat at the White House:
There was something to admire in Thomas's determination to ask uncomfortable questions. But when she declared George W. Bush the "worst president ever" in 2003, she shed any pretense of fair-mindedness. As time went on, her questions turned into speeches, as in this 2007 challenge to Bush over Iraq:
"Mr. President, you started this war. It's a war of your choosing. You can end it, alone. Today. At this point bring in peacekeepers, U.N. peacekeepers. Two million Iraqis have fled the country as refugees. Two million more are displaced. Thousands and thousands are dead. Don't you understand? We brought the al-Qaeda into Iraq." One might agree or disagree with those sentiments, but she was performing as an activist, not a journalist.
Former CNN correspondent Jamie McIntyre wrote last week that "there's a big difference between asking tough questions and getting answers to tough questions. Anyone can ASK tough questions. But figuring out how to hold government officials accountable, by posing questions in such a way that they can't avoid answering them, is a much harder, and far more valuable journalistic exercise than just venting from a padded front seat in the White House briefing room. Helen Thomas' questions were not designed to probe weaknesses in the president's policies. They were just meant to provoke him."
Former Bush speechwriter David Frum said on his blog that "calling on Helen Thomas was a notorious method for a hard-pressed White House press secretary to EVADE tough questions from the rest of the press corps. A zany, out-of-left-field protest from Thomas would disrupt a flow of unwelcome queries, maybe spark a tension-breaking laugh, maybe change the subject altogether."
Frum is right that Helen's rants were not designed to elicit meaningful answers. But it would be wrong to suggest that an Ari Fleischer would have welcomed the chance to call on Helen to disrupt a flow of questions or change the subject. There were occasions -- as when I was in the briefing room in 2001 and 2002 -- when other reporters (ABC's Terry Moran comes to mind, working for "pro-Palestinian" anchor Peter Jennings) would support a Helen question, insist she had a point, and asked Fleischer to elaborate on his answer.
I would also beg to differ with Frum on the notion that Helen's questions could spark a "tension-breaking laugh." They were often tension-builders, not tension-breakers. There was rarely giggling when Helen asked a question. By contrast, when conservative Les Kinsolving would begin reading one of his long questions from his notebook, often citing a report in The Washington Times, the chortling was an everyday affair, and it would start almost immediately, even if the question was good.
PS: Kurtz ended his Media Notes column by relaying Sarah Palin's interview with Greta van Susteren on "Boobgate" and other controversies. The Post had a picture of Palin with the snarky caption: "REFUTING THE RUMOR: 'Nooo, I have not had implants,' Sarah Palin told the intrepid Greta van Susteren."
