Helen's New War

Helen Thomas has been out of the objectivity business for some time now, so she's entitled to her opinions.

One of those opinions is a rather low estimation of her journalistic colleagues on the Iraq war.

The Hearst columnist has made clear, at one White House briefing after another, that she fiercely opposes the war. One might wonder whether she should be giving brief antiwar speeches in the form of questions, but again, she's a commentator now, not a UPI reporter.

I gather, though, that her critique of the media's performance in 2002 and 2003 is starting to rub some journalists the wrong way. I don't know anyone in the business who thinks the media did a great job of skeptically reporting on the administration during the runup to the war, even though independent evidence of whether Saddam indeed had WMD was hard to come by. But Thomas, who's got a new book called "Watchdogs of Democracy?", goes much farther.

In an interview with Cox News, Thomas says her book is "just sort of a critique - some might say an attack - on the White House press corps, the Pentagon press corps and so forth for laying down on the job. I feel they gave up their one weapon, which is skepticism, in the run-up to the war. And they had plenty, plenty notice that we were going to war - two years, in fact. . . . I was outraged at what I felt was a deafening silence when the reporters should have been asking, 'You want to go to war? Why? Give us the proof.' "

And here's the kicker: "I honestly believe we could have prevented the war."

I know from my e-mail, after writing about the media's mistakes during that period, that some folks out there believe that as well, even though we don't control a single military unit. Now Rich Oppel , editor of the Austin American-Statesman, takes on Thomas's argument:

"Her thesis is that the Washington press corps has failed the public by not being sufficiently aggressive in challenging the president, his press secretary and other aides. Reporters had two years to demand that Bush justify invading Iraq, but instead were 'compliant, complicit and gullible' for fear of being considered un-American.

"After reading news conference transcripts, I disagree.

Thomas goes on: 'I was startled that so many reporters and photographers at the Pentagon and the White House supported the war.' What bothers me is not how reporters lined up on the war, but that they would reveal their opinions on political matters. Perhaps TV shout shows and blogging are influencing reporters to abandon neutrality.

"My advice to reporters: Keep your opinions to yourself. They are irrelevant. I don't care what you believe; I care what you know. Put that in the paper.

"I respect Thomas . . . But I disagree with her on the nature of 'aggressive reporting.' "