Reporter Thomas retires amid uproar

June 8, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Helen Thomas, the opinionated White House correspondent who used her seat in the front row of history to grill 10 presidents and often exasperate them, lost her storied perch Monday in a flap over calling on Israelis to get “out of Palestine.”

Thomas, 89, who made her name as a bulldog for United Press International and was a pioneer for women in journalism, abruptly retired as a columnist for Hearst News Service. The announcement, in a terse statement by Hearst, came after videotaped remarks she made to an independent filmmaker spread virally through the Internet.

She apologized, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs denounced her comments as “offensive and reprehensible.” Her press corps colleagues with the White House Correspondents Association issued a rare admonishment calling them “indefensible.”

Thomas joined UPI in 1943 and began covering the White House for the wire service in 1960. Fiercely competitive, she became the first female White House bureau chief for a wire service when UPI named her to the position in 1974. She was also the first female officer at the National Press Club, where women had once been barred as members.

“Helen was just a vacuum cleaner about information,” said author Kay Mills, who took dictation from Thomas as a young UPI staffer and wrote “A Place in the News: From the Women’s Pages to the Front Page.”

“She made sure she had everything,” Mills said. “She may have been covering Jackie Kennedy and a birthday party for one of the children, but I’ll tell you, the desk had every bit of information it ever needed.”