WASHINGTON—Helen Thomas, a wire service correspondent and columnist who used her seat in the front row of history to challenge and annoy nine U.S. presidents, died Saturday at her home in Washington. She was 92.

No immediate cause of death was disclosed, but Thomas had been on dialysis for a kidney ailment.

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 United Press International wire service for almost 60 years.

Among the most recognized reporters in America, 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 Barack Obama said in a statement.

Thomas’ pointed queries often agitated the powerful but she was also praised for posing questions “almost like a housewife in Des Moines would ask,” a colleague once said. She asked Richard Nixon point-blank what his secret plan to end the Vietnam War was, and she asked Ronald Reagan what right the United States had to invade Grenada in 1983.

“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.”

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 then 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.

Her strength was her indefatigable pursuit of hard news, the bread and butter of the wire services. She arrived at work every morning before dawn and accompanied nine 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.

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.”

She apologized, but the White House Correspondents’ Association issued a rare admonishment, calling her statements “indefensible.”

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, Thomas and two other women reporters 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 cancelled. Women were allowed in, starting in 1956, but were relegated to a balcony, where they were not permitted to ask questions of the guests.

Helen Amelia Thomas was born Aug. 4, 1920, to 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 neighbourhood that was home to people of Italian, African, German and Arab ancestry.

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She found her career while working on her high school newspaper, then studied journalism at what is now Wayne State University in Detroit.

Thomas’s career began as a copy girl on the Washington Daily News and she joined what was then known as United Press in 1943. She was assigned to the White House in 1961 in part because of the great interest in first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, as well as the new young president. She became UPI White House bureau chief in 1974, the first woman to head a wire service bureau there. She stayed in that position until 2000 when she joined Hearst.

In 1971 she married Associated Press correspondent Douglas Cornell. A few years later, Cornell learned he had Alzheimer’s disease. He died in 1982. They had no children.

Known for her quick wit, 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.”