Helen Thomas, whose career covering the White House dated back to the Kennedy administration, died on Saturday at the age of 92, the Gridiron Club announced in an email to members on Saturday. 
 
 Thomas was the first woman to join the White House Correspondents' Association, and the first woman to serve as its president. She was also the first female member of the Gridiron Club, Washington's historic press group. She served for 57 years at United Press International, first as a correspondent then as a White House bureau chief, before becoming a columnist for Hearst Papers. 
 
 "Former Gridiron Club president Helen Thomas, our first female member, died Saturday morning at her Washington apartment after a long illness," Gridiron's Carl P. Leubsdorf wrote in an email to members. "She would have been 93 next month." 
 
 (PHOTOS: Life and career of Helen Thomas) 
 
 Present at the press briefings of ten consecutive presidential administrations, Thomas earned herself a front-row seat at White House press briefings. Beyond Washington, her status as a trailblazing female reporter made her name a cultural reference point, even invoked in an episode of "the Simpsons." 
 
 But Thomas's career in journalism ended abruptly in 2010 when controversial remarks she made about Israeli Jews to a Rabbi were caught on camera. Thomas, a daughter of Lebanese immigrants, told the Rabbi that Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine," and that the Jewish people should go home to "Poland, Germany ... and America and everywhere else." 
 
 On Saturday, Thomas's colleagues expressed sadness and shared memories of the veteran reporter on Twitter. 
 
 (WATCH: Thomas in the W.H. briefing room) 
 
 "Helen Thomas made it possible for all of us who followed: woman pioneer journalist broke barriers died today wld have been 93 nxt month RIP," Andrea Mitchell, the NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent wrote. 
 
 Thomas was born in Winchester, Kentucky in 1920, one of nine children, and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She wrote three books over the course of her career: "Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times" (1999); "Thanks for the Memories Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row at the White House" (2002); and "Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How it Has Failed the Public" (2006). 
 
 (WATCH: Thomas's controversial remarks ended career) 
 
 UPDATE (12:20 p.m.): White House Correspondents' Association President Steve Thomma has issued the following statement: 
 
 Helen Thomas was a trailblazer in journalism and in the White House press corps, covering presidents from John F. Kennedy through Barack Obama. Starting with the Kennedy administration, she was the first woman to cover the president and not just the First Lady. At her urging in 1962, Kennedy said he would not attend the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents Association unless it was opened to women for the first time. It was. And in 1975-76, she served as the first woman president of the association. Women and men who’ve followed in the press corps all owe a debt of gratitude for the work Helen did and the doors she opened. All of our journalism is the better for it. 
 
 UPDATE (1:39 p.m.) : President Obama released a statement: 
 
 Michelle and I were saddened to learn of the passing of Helen Thomas. Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism. She covered every White House since President Kennedy’s, and during that time she never failed to keep presidents – myself included – on their toes. What made Helen the “Dean of the White House Press Corps” was not just the length of her tenure, but her fierce belief that our democracy works best when we ask tough questions and hold our leaders to account. Our thoughts are with Helen’s family, her friends, and the colleagues who respected her so deeply. 
 
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 Read more about: Helen Thomas, Women Rule ||||| WASHINGTON — Helen Thomas, whose keen curiosity, unquenchable drive and celebrated constancy made her a trailblazing White House correspondent in a press corps dominated by men and who was later regarded as the dean of the White House briefing room, died on Saturday at her home in Washington. She was 92. 
 
 Her death was announced by the Gridiron Club, one of Washington’s leading news societies. Ms. Thomas was a past president of the organization. 
 
 Ms. Thomas covered every president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama for United Press International and, later, Hearst Newspapers. To her colleagues, she was the unofficial but undisputed head of the press corps, her status ratified by her signature line at the end of every White House news conference: “Thank you, Mr. President.” 
 
 Her blunt questions and sharp tone made her a familiar personality not only in the parochial world inside the Washington Beltway but also to television audiences across the country. 
 
 “Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism,” President Obama said in a statement on Saturday. “She never failed to keep presidents — myself included — on their toes.” 
 
 Presidents grew to respect, even to like, Ms. Thomas for her forthrightness and stamina, which sustained her well after the age at which most people had settled into retirement. President Bill Clinton gave her a cake on Aug. 4, 1997, her 77th birthday. Twelve years later, President Obama gave her cupcakes for her 89th. At his first news conference in February 2009, Mr. Obama called on her, saying: “Helen, I’m excited. This is my inaugural moment.” 
 
 But 16 months later, Ms. Thomas abruptly announced her retirement from Hearst amid an uproar over her assertion that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back where they belonged, perhaps Germany or Poland. Her remarks, made almost offhandedly days earlier at a White House event, set off a storm when a videotape was posted. 
 
 In her retirement announcement, Ms. Thomas, whose parents immigrated to the United States from what is now Lebanon, said that she deeply regretted her remarks and that they did not reflect her “heartfelt belief” that peace would come to the Middle East only when all parties embraced “mutual respect and tolerance.” 
 
 “May that day come soon,” she said. 
 
 Ms. Thomas’s career bridged two eras, beginning during World War II when people got their news mostly from radio, newspapers and movie newsreels, and extending into the era of 24-hour information on cable television and the Internet. She resigned from U.P.I. on May 16, 2000, a day after it was taken over by an organization with links to the Unification Church. 
 
 Weeks later, Ms. Thomas was hired by Hearst to write a twice-weekly column on national issues. She spent the last 10 years of her working life there. 
 
 When Ms. Thomas took a job as a radio writer for United Press in 1943 (15 years before it merged with the International News Service to become U.P.I.), most female journalists wrote about social events and homemaking. The journalists who covered war, crime and politics, and congratulated one another over drinks at the press club were typically men. 
 
 She worked her way into full-time reporting and by the mid-1950s was covering federal agencies. She covered John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960, and when he won she became the first woman assigned to the White House full time by a news service. 
 
 Ms. Thomas was also the first woman to be elected an officer of the White House Correspondents’ Association and the first to serve as its president. In 1975, she became the first woman elected to the Gridiron Club, which for 90 years had been a men-only bastion of Washington journalists. 
 
 Ms. Thomas was known for her dawn-to-dark work hours, and she won her share of exclusives and near-exclusives. She was the only female print journalist to accompany President Richard M. Nixon on his breakthrough trip to China in 1972. 
 
 “Helen was a better reporter than she was a writer — but in her prime had more than her share of scoops the rest of us would try to match,” Mark Knoller, the longtime CBS News White House reporter, wrote in a Twitter message on Saturday morning. 
 
 And, he added, “Pity the poor WH press aide who would try to tell Helen, ‘You can’t stand there.' ” ||||| Story highlights Thomas covered White House with "intensity and tenacity," Clintons say 
 
 Thomas will be buried in Detroit 
 
 She was a trailblazer on the White House press corps 
 
 Her retirement in 2010 came amid controversy 
 
 Trailblazing White House journalist Helen Thomas has died at age 92 after a long illness, sources told CNN Saturday. 
 
 Thomas covered 10 presidents over nearly half a century, and became a legend in the industry. 
 
 She was a fixture at White House news conferences -- sitting front and center late in her career -- where she frequently exasperated government spokesmen with her pointed questions. 
 
 Thomas began covering the White House for United Press International when John F. Kennedy became president in 1961 and was a fixture there until her retirement in 2010. 
 
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 She was considered the dean of the White House press corps because she was the longest-serving White House journalist. 
 
 Thomas will be buried in Detroit, and a memorial service is planned in Washington in October, according to her family. 
 
 President Barack Obama said that it was "not just the length of her tenure, but her fierce belief that our democracy works best when we ask tough questions and hold our leaders to account," that put her in high esteem. 
 
 In a written statement, Obama called Thomas a "true pioneer" and said she kept the presidents she covered -- including himself -- on their toes. 
 
 "Helen was just a living inspiration" 
 
 Her career, however, came to an end under a cloud of controversy. 
 
 Thomas, then working for the media conglomerate Hearst as a syndicated columnist, was blasted for comments she made regarding Jewish people. 
 
 In 2010, a YouTube video surfaced showing her saying that Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine," and that the Jewish people should go home to "Poland, Germany ... and America and everywhere else." 
 
 Thomas apologized for her remarks, writing, "They do not reflect my heartfelt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon." 
 
 She announced her retirement one week later. 
 
 In 2012, Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi presented Thomas with an award. 
 
 She was a mentor to young journalists 
 
 Helen Thomas: Fast Facts 
 
 Thomas, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, was born in Winchester, Kentucky, on August 4, 1920. She was one of nine children. Thomas was raised in Detroit, where she attended Wayne State University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1942. 
 
 In October 1971, Thomas married Douglas Cornell; he died in 1982. 
 
 She wrote three books: "Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times" (1999); "Thanks for the Memories Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row at the White House" (2002); and "Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How it Has Failed the Public" (2006). 
 
 Share your memories 
 
 In describing her job, Thomas once said, "I've never covered the president in any way other than that he is ultimately responsible." 
 
 Along the way, she broke some barriers by becoming the first female president of the prestigious White House Correspondents' Association and Washington's Gridiron Club. 
 
 "I hope there are many women following me right in this same spot," she said. Well into her 80s, she was a mentor to many young journalists. 
 
 Thomas left UPI in May 2000, when the wire service was sold to a company controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the Korean founder and leader of the worldwide Unification Church. 
 
 Two months later, Hearst News Service hired her as a syndicated columnist, and she returned to the White House for fodder for her columns. 
 
 Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, recalled Thomas' "tough-minded dedication." 
 
 "Helen was a pioneering journalist who, while adding more than her share of cracks to the glass ceiling, never failed to bring intensity and tenacity to her White House beat," the Clintons said in a statement. 
 
 "... Her work was extraordinary because of her intelligence, her lively spirit and great sense of humor, and most importantly her commitment to the role of a strong press in a healthy democracy." 
 
 No question seemed off-limits 
 
 Colleagues remember her as a genuinely fearless woman who asked the toughest questions of presidents, no matter their party. 
 
 In January 2009, as President George Bush was preparing to leave office, Thomas aimed her editorial guns at him and his administration. 
 
 Among her criticisms: that before the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, administration officials ignored "significant early warnings of an imminent strike against the U.S." 
 
 Journalists remember Helen Thomas 
 
 In a commentary, she slammed Bush for what she considered his failings, including leading the country "into a senseless war against Iraq, a calamity still under way as he leaves office almost six years after the invasion." 
 
 She considered him "the worst president ever." 
 
 Thomas embraced the freedoms of a columnist with vigor. 
 
 "I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter," Thomas told an audience at the Massachusetts of Technology (MIT) in late 2002. "Now I wake up and ask myself, 'Who do I hate today?'" 
 
 One afternoon in October 2009, she targeted President Barack Obama's spokesman, Robert Gibbs, during the daily briefing. 
 
 Health care reform was being debated at the time, and Thomas asked Gibbs every day whether a public option would be part of the package. 
 
 In the back-and-forth that ensued, Thomas said that she already had reached a conclusion but could not get a straight answer from the presidential spokesman. 
 
 "Then why do you keep asking me?" Gibbs inquired. 
 
 "Because I want your conscience to bother you," Thomas replied. 
 
 The room broke into laughter as Gibbs turned red. 
 
 People we've lost in 2013 ||||| Unintimidated by presidents or press secretaries, Thomas was known as the dean of the White House press corps for her longevity in the beat. She reported for the UPI wire service for almost 60 years. 
 
 Unintimidated by presidents or press secretaries, Thomas was known as the dean of the White House press corps for her longevity in the beat. She reported for the UPI wire service for almost 60 years. Bethesda Urban Partnership 
 
 Thomas's work as a White House watchdog began with the Kennedy administration. Although her career ended in controversy, she was celebrated as a pioneering woman in journalism. Thomas died July 20 in Washington. She was 92. 
 
 Thomas's work as a White House watchdog began with the Kennedy administration. Although her career ended in controversy, she was celebrated as a pioneering woman in journalism. Thomas died July 20 in Washington. She was 92. 
 
 Thomas's work as a White House watchdog began with the Kennedy administration. Although her career ended in controversy, she was celebrated as a pioneering woman in journalism. Thomas died July 20 in Washington. She was 92. 
 
 Helen Thomas, a wire service correspondent and columnist whose sharp questions from the front row of the White House press room challenged and annoyed 10 presidents and who was effective in divulging information that federal officials tried to keep secret, died July 20 at her home in Washington. She was 92. 
 
 A friend, retired journalist Muriel Dobbin, confirmed her death. No immediate cause of death was disclosed, but Ms. Thomas had been on dialysis for a kidney ailment. 
 
 Unintimidated by presidents or press secretaries, Ms. Thomas was known as the dean of the White House press corps for her longevity in the beat. She reported for the United Press International wire service for almost 60 years. 
 
 Among the most-recognized reporters in America, Ms. Thomas was a short, dark-eyed woman with a gravelly voice who, for many years, rose from her front-row seat at presidential news conferences to ask the first or second question. For nearly 30 years, she closed the sessions with a no-nonsense “Thank you, Mr. President.” 
 
 “Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism,” President Obama said in a statement. “She covered every White House since President Kennedy’s, and during that time she never failed to keep presidents — myself included — on their toes.” 
 
 Ms. Thomas’s pointed queries often agitated the powerful, but she was also lauded for posing questions “almost like a housewife in Des Moines would ask,” a colleague once said. She asked President Richard M. Nixon point-blank what his secret plan to end the Vietnam War was, and she asked President Ronald Reagan what right the United States had to invade Grenada in 1983. 
 
 When President George H.W. Bush announced that the defense budget would remain the same after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of communism in Europe, she succinctly asked, “Who’s the enemy?” 
 
 “I respect the office of the presidency,” she told Ann McFeatters for a 2006 profile in Ms. magazine, “but I never worship at the shrines of our public servants. They owe us the truth.” 
 
 Ms. Thomas had a number of scoops, including her exclusive interviews with Martha Mitchell, which helped expose some aspects of the Watergate scandal. Mitchell, the wife of Attorney General John Mitchell, told Thomas in late-night phone calls that she had seen a Nixon campaign strategy book that included plans for Watergate-style operations. Thomas also broke the story that Nixon’s speechwriters were working on a resignation address that he would give the next day. 
 
 Her strength was her indefatigable pursuit of hard news, the bread-and-butter staple of the wire services. She arrived at work every morning before dawn and accompanied presidents on overseas trips. She was the only female print reporter to accompany Nixon on his historic visit to China, and later, in her 70s and 80s, she often outdistanced younger reporters on arduous around-the-world travels. 
 
 Her unparalleled experience covering the presidency earned her the respect and affection of both colleagues and public officials for decades. 
 
 In 2000, she quit UPI and became a columnist for the Hearst News Service, a job she retired from in 2010 after she told a rabbi that Jewish settlers should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back to “Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.” 
 
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 She apologized, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs denounced her comments as “offensive and reprehensible.” The White House Correspondents’ Association issued a rare admonishment, calling her statements “indefensible.” 
 
 The remarks ignited a controversy that had been simmering for years. The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, Ms. Thomas routinely questioned White House officials over U.S. policies toward Israel and the Middle East, which led some to complain she was too sympathetic to Palestinian and Arab viewpoints. Bush spokesman Tony Snow once famously answered one of her questions with, “Thank you for the Hezbollah view.” 
 
 Ms. Thomas was clear about her antipathy to secretive government and her belief that the George W. Bush administration disregarded well-established law. In 2003, she told another reporter that she was covering “the worst president in American history.” The remark was quoted, and Bush, who was not amused, froze her out. She apologized in writing, and he accepted her regrets but did not call on her at his news conferences for the next three years. 
 
 When he finally did, she immediately fired off a classic Thomas question: 
 
 “I’d like to ask you, Mr. President. Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet — your Cabinet officers, intelligence people and so forth — what was your real reason? You have said it wasn’t oil — quest for oil — it hasn’t been Israel or anything else. What was it?” 
 
 She and Bush went toe to toe, interrupting each other as the president attempted to respond. 
 
 “I’m never going to forget the vow I made to the American people,” Bush said, “that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.” 
 
 Ms. Thomas publicly criticized her colleagues in the press and broadcast media for failing to ask the hard questions of the Bush administration, but she saved her toughest criticisms for elected officials. 
 
 “We are the only institution in our society that can question a president on a regular basis and make him accountable,” she told author Kay Mills for a 1996 Modern Maturity magazine article. “Otherwise, he could be king.” 
 
 Ms. Thomas had spent much of her life fighting against unearned privilege, leading a decades-long battle to gain female reporters equal access to jobs, news and newsmakers. 
 
 In the 1950s and 1960s, Ms. Thomas, Associated Press reporter Fran Lewine and Washington Post writer Elsie Carper fought to gain admittance to the newsmaking luncheons at the National Press Club, which then barred women from its membership. The club, with the help of the U.S. State Department, booked world leaders to speak, and women, even those who worked for prominent press outlets, were not allowed. 
 
 The lobbying finally paid off after a planned appearance of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was nearly canceled. Women were allowed in, starting in 1956, but were relegated to a balcony, where they were not permitted to ask questions of the guests. After another decade of activism, women were finally allowed to join the National Press Club as full members in 1971. 
 
 Ms. Thomas became the club’s first female officer, as well as the first woman to be named White House bureau chief of a major wire service, the first woman to be admitted to the Gridiron Club, the first woman to serve as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and the recipient of multiple lifetime achievement awards. 
 
 High school journalist 
 
 Helen Amelia Thomas was born Aug. 4, 1920, in Winchester, Ky., one of nine children of immigrants from present-day Lebanon. A few years after her birth, the family moved to Detroit, where her father ran a grocery store in a neighborhood that was home to people of Italian, African, German and Arab ancestry. 
 
 She found her career while working on her high school newspaper, then studied journalism at what is now Wayne State University in Detroit. She paid for her education by working in the college library and helping out at her brother’s gas station. 
 
 After graduating in 1942, she moved to Washington, where she was briefly a copy girl, the newsroom equivalent of a gofer, at the old Washington Daily News. After being laid off, she knocked on doors at the National Press Building until the United Press wire service hired her in 1943 to write radio scripts, starting at 5:30 a.m., for a salary of $24 a week. 
 
 When World War II ended in 1945, many single female journalists were laid off to make room for the returning veterans. But Ms. Thomas stayed on, and by 1956, she had joined the UP’s national staff to cover federal agencies. (The United Press took over the International News Service in 1958 to become United Press International.) 
 
 In 1960, she was assigned to report on the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy. When Kennedy won the election, there was suddenly a huge demand for stories about his glamorous wife, Jacqueline. 
 
 Ms. Thomas interviewed hairdressers, clerks at clothing stores, caterers, pianists who played at the family’s parties and even the owner of the diaper service. She and Lewine staked out the hospital when John Kennedy Jr. was born and were such a frequent presence in Jacqueline Kennedy’s life that the first lady began calling them “the harpies” and complained to the Secret Service that “two strange Spanish-looking women” were stalking her. 
 
 The Kennedy administration was her favorite, she said in one of her four books, “Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times” (1999), because of the “vibrancy and vigah” that the family exuded. She was on hand when Kennedy shook hands with a teenage Bill Clinton in July 1963. 
 
 Over the next decade, Ms. Thomas began reporting harder news, still finding the unusual and juicy tidbit. President Lyndon B. Johnson was furious when he learned through Ms. Thomas’s UPI report that his daughter Luci was engaged. 
 
 “You announced Luci’s engagement, you announced Luci’s marriage, you announced when Luci was going to have a baby, and I resented it,” he once told her. But in those more informal times, he also invited her to lunch in the family quarters of the White House when he learned about her worry for her family after Detroit erupted in riots, she wrote. 
 
 In 1970, her longtime mentor, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Merriman Smith, committed suicide. Ms. Thomas was named UPI’s senior White House correspondent, the first woman to hold that post. 
 
 Few knew at the time that she was dating journalist Douglas B. Cornell, who also covered the White House for the rival Associated Press newswire. Cornell, 17 years her senior, was retiring in 1971, and Nixon gave him a going-away party. In the midst of the ceremony, first lady Pat Nixon grabbed the microphone and announced the Thomas-Cornell engagement. “At last,” the first lady said, “I’ve scooped Helen Thomas.” 
 
 A few years later, Cornell learned that he had Alzheimer’s disease. He died in 1982. Ms. Thomas had no children; a complete list of survivors could not be confirmed. 
 
 Ms. Thomas was named UPI’s White House bureau chief in 1974, and Nixon noted that hallmark at a news conference. 
 
 “So after he had been so gracious, he pointed to me for the first question,” she wrote in her White House memoir. “ ‘Mr. President,’ I said. ‘Mr. Haldeman, your former top aide in the White House, has been charged with perjury because he testified you said it would be wrong to pay hush money to silence the Watergate defendants.” 
 
 She continued, in “Front Row at the White House”: “It’s like I say to young people who ask me about going into journalism: If you want to be loved, don’t go into this business.” 
 
 Sharp-edged humor 
 
 Known for her quick wit, Ms. Thomas didn’t hesitate to exercise it on presidents. When a set of fortune-telling scales once spewed out a card for Gerald Ford saying, “You are a brilliant leader,” she glanced at the card and cracked, “It got your weight wrong, too.” 
 
 In China, she accompanied Pat Nixon to a farm, where the first lady wondered about the breed of some pigs in a pen. “Male chauvinist, of course,” Ms. Thomas piped up. And when a man told her that ladies were not allowed in a Bible study class taught by Jimmy Carter, she retorted, “I’m no lady, I’m a reporter.” 
 
 Her performances at the annual Gridiron Club song-and-dance show often brought down the house. She appeared in comedian Stephen Colbert’s mock audition tape in 2006 for the job of presidential spokesman, playing herself in relentless pursuit of him. She turned up in President Bill Clinton’s 2000 spoof tape as well and had a brief appearance in the 1993 movie “Dave,” rolling her eyes at the fake president’s grand pronouncements. 
 
 In the 1980s, after the official planting of a Lebanon cedar tree on the South Lawn of the White House, fellow reporters urged Ms. Thomas, a Lebanese American, to pick up the ceremonial shovel and toss some dirt into the hole to cover the roots. 
 
 “And as she shoveled,” ABC News broadcaster Sam Donaldson later said, “I heard the ghosts of presidents past and present say, ‘Shove her in.’ ” 
 
 Ms. Thomas was president of the Women’s National Press Club in 1959 and was named one of the “25 Most Influential Women in America” by the World Almanac in 1976. In 1998, she was the first recipient of a prize established in her name by the White House Correspondents’ Association — the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award. 
 
 In 1984, when she received the National Press Club’s Fourth Estate Award, Reagan told Ms. Thomas: “You are not only a fine and respected professional, you have also become an important part of the American presidency.” 
 
 After spending most of her working life at UPI, Ms. Thomas quit the wire service in 2000, the day after the announcement of its acquisition by News World Communications, a company founded and controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church. Within two months, she became a columnist for Hearst Newspapers and resumed her seat in the White House briefing room, but in the back row rather than the front row. 
 
 At the time, colleagues and sources lined up to praise her. 
 
 “It’s not too strong to say that Helen’s a hero of journalism — to work that long, that well, under that much pressure at that high an altitude,” said former CBS News anchorman Dan Rather. 
 
 She returned to her seat in the front row in 2007, courtesy of the White House Correspondents’ Association. 
 
 Although she identified herself as a political liberal, Ms. Thomas did not hesitate to criticize the Democratic administration of President Obama, even after he presented her with cupcakes on Aug. 4, 2009, their shared birthday. She once told CNSNews.com that not even Nixon attempted to control the news media the way Obama’s administration tried to do. 
 
 “What the hell do they think we are — puppets?” Ms. Thomas asked. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”
– Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas is dead at age 92, reports CNN. The word "trailblazing" is already in heavy use, as here in Politico's early obituary, given that Thomas achieved so many firsts for female journalists—including becoming the first woman to serve as president of the White House Correspondents' Association. She covered 10 presidents, mostly for UPI, but her career ended on a sour note in 2010 when she was caught on video saying that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine." Washington Post: She was "unintimidated by presidents or press secretaries" and became "known as the dean of the White House press corps." The obituary notes that Thomas was the daughter Lebanese immigrants. "She routinely questioned White House officials over U.S. policies towards Israel and the Middle East, which led some to complain she was sympathetic to Palestinian and Arab viewpoints, tendencies which became more pronounced after she left straight-news reporting for opinion-writing." New York Times: Her "bottomless curiosity and unquenchable drive made her a prominent White House reporter at a time when men dominated the profession."