CNN news 2013-07-25 加文本

cnn news 2013-07-25

We mark in this show the life and career ofHelen Thomas, who died yesterday at the age of 92. But her story has fourdistinct chapters.

There was Helen Thomas the classic Americansuccess story, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants who settled in the U.S. withless than 20 bucks to their names.

She made a good young female reporter inWashington for the United Press service. Then there was a Helen Thomas, thelegendary White House reporter, breaking stories such as Gerald Ford's fullpardon of Richard Nixon for Watergate, a woman so integral to the Washingtonexperience that political movies cast her to give them a touch of reality.Though she reported intensely, she didn't land many enduring scoop. Few WhiteHouse reporters do. But she embraced the theatricality of her job. After thePresident from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama, the inconvenient questions thatmany Americans want their leaders to face.

There was Helen Thomas, the path breaker,time and again prying open doors for women in the notoriously clubby WashingtoNPRess corps by demanding equal status. She became not just White Housecorrespondent but bureau chief, not just the first female member of theGridiron Club, but its president.

She forced open those doors because suchrecognitions would validate women reporters in the eyes of politicians andtheir journalistic peers. She mentored hundreds of women reporters and inspiredcountless more.

And then there was Helen Thomas, theliberal gadfly, her beliefs fully surfacing as she left United PressInternational to become a columnist for Hearst Newspapers in 2000, along withskepticism toward Israel and American policy in the Middle East.

For three full years, wary of her barbedquestions, President George W. Bush neglected to call on her.

When he finally did, Thomas asked him whyhe took the nation to war against Iraq at all. There is a principle injournalism that you don't remember someone solely by the worst thing she did,but a reporter as sharp as Thomas would notice meaningful omissions.

Late in life, Helen Thomas called on Jewsliving in Israel to return to the European lands in which millions of Jews weremurdered amid World War II. It was an astonishing and offensive remark. Thomaslost her job at Hearst and it effectively ended her career. Any honestrendering of Thomas' career must acknowledge that moment, but any such accountmust also recognize the path she blazed, the battles she fought and the spinshe exposed.