CREDITS
Director
Rory Kennedy
Producer
Rory Kennedy
Liz Garbus
Jack Youngelson
Editor
Sari Gilman
Director of Photography
Tom Hurwitz
Story Editor
Mark Bailey
Original Music
Miriam Cutler
Helen Thomas, a tour de force in political reporting, has covered the White House and every president in it since John F. Kennedy, earning her the nickname “First Lady of the Press.” In Thank You, Mr. President, Rory Kennedy sits down with Thomas to discuss her career, her role in the White House Press Corps, and her personal history as the daughter of illiterate Syrian imigrants in the US. Premiered in election season 2008, this film approaches the topic of Presidential responsibility from Thomas’s perspective, who says she believes, “Presidents deserve to be questioned, perhaps irreverently, to bring them down a size.”
Thank You, Mr. President premiered on HBO August 2008.
“Ms. Thomas’s memories of the presidents she has covered are all the more fascinating for not being rose-tinted.”
— New York Times