Veteran newswoman champions personal freedom
4/16/2003 News media contact: Kathy Gilbert · (615) 742-5470 · Nashville, Tenn. By Tom Slack* DAYTON,
Ohio (UMNS) - Don't give up personal freedoms for a temporary sense of
security, Helen Thomas told a symposium at Dayton's First United
Methodist Church April 12.
The diminutive but feisty newswoman,
famed for probing questions from the front row of the White House
newsroom during nine presidential administrations, spoke as the
congregation's New City Church Project publicly launched its
"SpiritQuest" outreach program for young people in Dayton.
"We in
the press are often accused of pre-empting the Bill of Rights, making
it our private preserve," she said. "We are its strongest defenders,
make no mistake about that. Whenever there is a question of freedom of
the press, we're there, we fight, we battle, but we know it isn't just
about freedom of the press. The Bill of Rights is absolutely essential
to democracy." The document, part of the Constitution, guarantees
freedom of assembly, speech and worship.
Thomas went to
Washington in 1943 as a copy girl for the Washington Daily News and
worked her way up through the ranks of reporters at United Press
International until she was permanently assigned to the White House in
1961. Now a columnist for Hearst Newspapers, she was UPI's White House
bureau chief from 1974 to 2000.
Every presidential candidate
promises an open administration, Thomas said, "but after they get
elected, they try to make government information their private
preserve."
"Secrecy in government is endemic," she added, "and it
has become even more so now. Our leaders have become less accountable
and more powerful, with a pliant Congress that defaults on its role."
One of those defaults has occurred with Congress' constitutional prerogative to declare war, she said.
"The
White House is not a place where battles are being fought," she
continued. "We have a one-minded administration - no devil's advocate,
no dissenters allowed."
That wasn't the atmosphere in all the
administrations she covered, Thomas said. Her favorite presidents were
the peacemakers, although she said a president should not want peace at
any price.
Thomas agrees that terrorism must be confronted, but
she doesn't recommend a war on terror. Instead, she said, the nation and
its leaders should search for the root causes of hatred of the United
States and face whatever truths are found. Finding out what went wrong
may help restore the nation's "halo" and let it regain its "wonderful
reputation as a beacon light of freedom, a country to be loved and
emulated for its goodness," she said.
Congress and the press must
be willing to be called "unpatriotic" unfairly, or basic rights to
privacy will disappear as fear leads to wiretapping and computers
compiling details of everyone's lives, she said. Citizens, as well as
members of the press, should question whether intrusive information
gathering really makes for a more secure nation, since the freedoms
won't suddenly and automatically come back when the crisis is over.
"We
in the press are in a profession that highly values skepticism, and
especially when it comes to leaders - with great justification, I might
add," she said. "We're not supposed to be cheerleaders, which we have
become. We follow our Holy Grail, which is truth, wherever it leads us.
We are the self-appointed, self-anointed watchdogs of democracy."
Thomas
appeared at a symposium and a fund-raising dinner to promote
"SpiritQuest," the New City Church project's outreach program to youth
ages 8 to 18. Based on the self-protection system of To Shin Do, the
program addresses at-risk youth, teaching perseverance and positive
mental imaging.
The First United Methodist Church of Dayton
created New City Church, led by Brice Thomas. Details are available at
www.newcitychurch.com.
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*Slack is director of communication for the West Ohio Annual Conference.
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