The White House Correspondents Association voted unanimously Sunday afternoon to move Fox News to the front row of the White House briefing room.



The seating change was prompted by the resignation of veteran UPI reporter Helen Thomas.



According to Ed Henry, the senior White House correspondent for CNN and member of the WHCA board, the Associated Press will move to the front-row middle seat formerly occupied by Thomas.



Fox News will replace the AP in its former seat, also in the front row, and NPR, which lobbied for Thomas's seat along with Fox and Bloomberg News, will take Fox's former seat in the second row.



The 2010-2011 WHCA board includes representatives from USA Today, Reuters, C-SPAN, the New York Times, Politico, Time magazine, NPR and the D.C. Examiner.



Thomas, a longtime critic of Israeli foreign policy, had resigned in late May after a video clip in which she said that Israelis should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" — to Europe, the United States and other places — surfaced on the internet.

Liberal groups had lobbied for NPR's placement in the front row over Fox, which one petition called a "right-wing propaganda outlet."

