Not All White House Reporters Are Pushovers
by Norman Solomon
Dissident Voice
January 9, 2003
At
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., reporters usually shuffle along to a snoozy beat. But
anyone who denigrates the mainstream media in general, or the White House press
corps in particular, should acknowledge that exceptional journalists do strive
to ask deeper questions while most colleagues go through the motions.
The latest in a
long line of presidential spinners, Ari Fleischer, began a news conference on
Jan. 6 with a nice greeting: "Good afternoon and happy New Year to
everybody." But his bonhomie didn't last more than a minute.
"At the
earlier briefing, Ari, you said that the president deplored the taking of
innocent lives," Helen Thomas began. "Does that apply to all innocent
lives in the world?"
It was a simple
question -- and, unfortunately, an extraordinary one. Few journalists at the
White House move beyond the subtle but powerful ties that bind reporters and top
officials in Washington. Routinely, shared assumptions are the unspoken name of
the game.
In this case,
Thomas wasn't playing -- and Fleischer's new year wasn't exactly off to a great
start. His tongue moved, but he declined to answer the question. Instead, he
parried: "I refer specifically to a horrible terrorist attack on Tel Aviv
that killed scores and wounded hundreds."
Of course that
attack was reprehensible. But Thomas had asked whether President Bush deplored
the taking of "all innocent lives in the world." And Fleischer didn't
want to go there.
But Helen
Thomas, an 82-year-old journalist who has been covering the White House for
several decades, was not to be deterred by the flack's sleight-of-tongue
maneuver. "My follow-up is," she persisted, "why does he want to
drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?"
On a dime,
Fleischer spun paternal and nationalistic. "Helen, the question is how to
protect Americans, and our allies and friends --"
What Fleischer
had just called "the question" was actually his question. He had no
use for hers.
Thomas
responded: "They're not attacking you. Have they [the Iraqis] laid the
glove on you or on the United States ... in 11 years?"
Fleischer laced
his retort with sarcasm. "I guess you have forgotten about the Americans
who were killed in the first Gulf War as a result of Saddam Hussein's
aggression then."
"Is this
revenge," Thomas replied, "11 years of revenge?"
The man in
charge of White House spin revved up the RPMs. "Helen, I think you know
very well that the president's position is that he wants to avert war ...
"
But the
journalist refused to jettison her original, still-unanswered question. She
asked: "Would the president attack innocent Iraqi lives?"
"The
president wants to make certain that he can defend our country ... "
Thomas would not
back off. She demanded to know whether Bush thinks the Iraqi people "are a
threat to us."
At that point,
Fleischer went off message with a weird statement. "The Iraqi people are
represented by their government," said the man speaking for the president
of the United States. A journalist's persistence had led him to put foot in
polished mouth.
Some people like
to play "Hail to the Chief." I would prefer to say "Hail to the
dean of the Washington press corps -- Helen Thomas." She knows that asking
truly tough questions involves a lot more than echoing partisan ping-pong.
After 57 years
as a reporter for United Press International, she quit UPI in 2000 when it was
bought by News World Communications, a firm affiliated with the Rev. Sun Myung
Moon's right-wing Unification Church. (Among its holdings is The Washington
Times.) Since then, Thomas has been writing an incisive syndicated column for
Hearst Newspapers.
In a speech at
MIT a couple of months ago, Helen Thomas told the audience: "I censored
myself for 50 years when I was a reporter." Media professionals are
frequently unwilling to say in public what they know in private. When a
mainstream journalist breaks out of self-censorship, the public benefits.
Day in and day
out, Helen Thomas is conspicuous for her fortitude at White House press
conferences. And let's also give credit to an intrepid newcomer at such press
follies. The other day, Russell Mokhiber of the Corporate Crime Reporter was
asking a simple question that went unanswered: "Ari, other than Elliott
Abrams, how many convicted criminals are on the White House staff?"
You can find
transcripts of Mokhiber's many exchanges with Fleischer posted at www.commondreams.org -- under the heading "Ari and
I" – examples of unflinching questions and slimy evasions at the White
House.
Thank you, Helen
Thomas. Thank you, Russell Mokhiber. It sure is refreshing to see journalists
doing their jobs instead of going along to get along.
Norman Solomon's new book "Target Iraq: What the
News Media Didn't Tell You," coauthored with foreign correspondent Reese
Erlich, will be published in February by Context Books. Email: mediabeat@igc.org