By Joe Spear
Free Press Editor
The ax finally fell on Helen Thomas, longtime White House correspondent who started her career as a beat reporter with UPI and covered 10 presidents starting with John F. Kennedy.
Hearst Newspaper Corp. helped her decide to retire quickly and suddenly after some untoward remarks about Israel and the Jewish people, telling them to get the "hell" out of Palestine and go home.
Her dismissal isn't as surprising as it is in leading one to think about the rather powerful interests that can get one canned in the news business. She admits what she said was wrong, and apologized. We suspect she wasn't fully aware of what she was saying and the tone.
Nonetheless, it was interesting to me that even the White House Correspondents club? voted to rebuke her and remove her front row seat. I didn't realize the White House correspondents had jurisdiction over seating in the briefing room.
Learn something new every day.
This should be some good fodder for the news cycle, and I'm sure Howard Kurtz will be talking a week after the fact on his "Reliable Sources" media show on CNN. By Sunday, I would think we would have explored every angle, but then again, this business needs news, and the death of one of its own is sort of a morbid, macabre curiosity
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