Helen Thomas Quotes

It's not like I just have to go to Washington and go to the White House everyday, and go to the same press conference at 10 in the morning and then be briefed at 4 in the afternoon, and then get a story on at 6.

One advantage to covering the Congress rather than the White House is that no one is controlling the agenda.

I've always felt privileged to cover the White House and to have that ringside seat to history

The legions of reporters who cover politics don't want to quit the clash and thunder of electoral combat for the dry duty of analyzing the federal budget. As a consequence, we have created the perpetual presidential campaign.

AP promoted me to the White House beat because I knew Clinton, his family, friends, and staff better than anybody in the national press corps. Those contacts helped me break a few stories and get my career in Washington jump-started.

Nixon is fascinating because he's our most alienated president. Everybody felt that they never knew who he was - that's palpable in the histories. His face is so cartoony that he's become this cartoon figure. I never really related to the romanticization of J.F.K., and I knew too much about Reagan to idealize him. Nixon falls in between.

I will not have New York Times muck-racking the President of the United States.

When you cover the White House, which I've done on and off, it's relatively straightforward - everything the president does is news.

I certainly don't think that it's the job of any journalist to make the presidency work.

I've said many times: I'm not a Washington reporter.

I am a member of that small, little group that covers - I'm a member of the White House correspondents association. I go to the White House every day.

There are a lot of ways to practice the art of journalism, and one of them is to use your art like a hammer to destroy the right people — who are almost always your enemies, for one reason or another, and who usually deserve to be crippled, because they are wrong. This is a dangerous notion, and very few professional journalists will endorse it — calling it "vengeful" and "primitive" and "perverse" regardless of how often they might do the same thing themselves. "That kind of stuff is opinion," they say, "and the reader is cheated if it's not labelled as opinion." Well, maybe so. Maybe Tom Paine cheated his readers and Mark Twain was a devious fraud with no morals at all who used journalism for his own foul ends. And maybe H. L. Mencken should have been locked up for trying to pass off his opinions on gullible readers and normal "objective journalism." Mencken understood that politics — as used in journalism — was the art of controlling his environment, and he made no apologies for it. In my case, using what politely might be called "advocacy journalism," I've used reporting as a weapon to affect political situations that bear down on my environment.

It used to be that a journalist covering the White House had trouble getting news because each person there worked for the same person, while in Congress they are all independent contractors and you could get news. But today, the White House Staff are all independent contractors and that is a great place to get news.

The job of media is the accountability of government.

The press is supposed to serve as a check on government.

The inaugural of Ronald Reagan, with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. And that was the greatest thing. Ronald Reagan and George Bush. That was - I still remember like it was yesterday.

I am not a politician; I've never run for anything in my life. I'm an economist. I'm a broadcaster. I've been an adviser. I worked for Ronald Reagan.

I would love to interview Sean Spicer.

People still assume the White House Correspondents' Association works for the White House, when in reality, it's a group of journalists who cover the White House. It's a branding thing, but because it has the 'White House' before it, people think they're just King Joffrey's goons.

I've covered a lot of presidential campaigns.

Politically at that time, with Thatcher in Britain and Reagan in the White House, it wasn't looking too great for the Left. And we were always on the left.

What led to my change of views about the Clintons was working through the research and writing on the book on Hillary.

I'm the female Bob Woodward! If I were a liberal, I couldn't write another book. I'd be so busy collecting awards! I'd be posing for the cover of 'Vanity Fair!'

I intensely covered Bush when he was Governor of Texas.

I've never seen anyone say, 'Let's go get this person today; let's really ram it into him.' I've never seen it. If a Democrat or Republican commits some horrendous story, the story will run. The networks will cover it.