Russert's Most Important Legacy

There have been many moving eulogies about the late NBC reporter Tim Russert. We have heard about his personal modesty and his extensive preparation for interviews. Russert was able to subtly expose the inconsistencies and underside of politicians with a smile.

But Russert's major contribution is the one that has been discussed the least. Russert was one of the few remaining reporters who adhered to the norms of adversarial journalism without resorting to partisan journalism. He asked aggressive questions, confronted politicians, and interjected his opinions while avoiding becoming a reporter from the left or the right.

There were several important changes that took place in the media during Russert's lifetime. The first occurred in the 1970s with the triumph of adversarial reporting. As a result of Vietnam and Watergate, reporters abandoned the norm of objectivity. Frustration had grown with this style of reporting. Politicians such as Senator Joseph McCarthy had manipulated reporter's belief in objectivity by stating controversial facts that were not supported by evidence with the full knowledge that reporters would publish their words without challenging them. Younger reporters were frustrated that senior colleagues had not been critical of the Johnson administration in 1965 when he Americanized the war in Vietnam and missed signs of corruption in Richard Nixon's White House.

The era of objectivity gave way to the era of adversarial journalism in the 1970s. The Washington Post's Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward made this style of reporting famous through their coverage of Watergate. They were not alone. Reporting on Vietnam in February 1968, CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite ended his broadcast by finally stating his opinion of the war: "to say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past."

The next change in the media resulted from technology. Cable television made its way into the homes of millions of Americans in the 1980s and 1990s. The medium transformed the news cycle and lessened editorial controls. CNN went on the air in 1980 and offered a 24-hour news cycle. Whereas in the network era-news cycle, the production of television stories took place over the course of an entire day (with producers sending out instructions to bureau chiefs in the morning and making decisions about what to air around five), cable allowed information to instantly go out on the air. Not only was information disseminated faster, but editorial controls diminished given the speed of the news cycle. George Stephanopoulos, a top advisor to Clinton and now the host of ABC news show, said that "stopping CNN was key. If they ran the story all day, however briefly, other news organizations could cite them to justify running their own stories. Our denials would be folded into these accounts, but the damage would be done."

Cable television resulted in the proliferation of news stations. Each show competed for a smaller share of the audience. Television hosts--who played a bigger role in the show -- scrambled to get stories quickly. According to Russert, "with satellites, everyone now has access to the same pictures and sound bites, and news becomes old with amazing speed, things have changed; networks are feeling the competition. We've become more aggressive... 10 or 15 years ago, the networks acted as if there was a tacit agreement to be 'highbrow' in their definition of news. Now we've got Geraldo, Inside Edition, A Current Affair, and Entertainment Tonight. Will their presence drive us, consciously or unconsciously, to gravitate toward more sex and scandal coverage." Newspapers mimicked television. With the advent of the internet, newspapers and magazines were able to publish stories with the same rapidity as television.

The same forces that caused partisanship and polarization in politics swept through the news industry by the mid-1990s, thus bringing Americans to the most recent stage in the history of the media: partisan journalism. Ironically, the norm of objective reporting emerged in the progressive era as an antidote to the partisan press of the nineteenth century. This trend has been most pronounced on television and radio. The move toward partisan reporting accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s as talk radio shows around the country introduced audiences to rightward leanings hosts who were open about their political stance on the news. Fox Television started in 1996 and brought the Rush Limbaugh style of reporting to national television audiences. For Fox, covering politics from the right was always their unstated objective. Fox programming, such as The O'Reilly Factor meshed adversarial reporting, cable era speed, and openly partisan interpretations of the news.

Recently, we have seen the same kind of reporting coming from the left. The former sportscaster Keith Olbermann now has one of the highest rated evening news shows. Olbermann has dropped any pretence of objectivity and has been openly critical of the Bush administration. His "Special Comment" segments toward the end of his broadcast allow him to openly lambast his opponents. Olbermann once said: "This advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up!" Olbermann took an extremely critical stand toward Senator Clinton and offered supportive coverage of Barack Obama, thus making his political positions even more clear.

There is of course room for this kind of reporting and it suits the current political climate of America. But the media needs more Tim Russerts, reporters who maintain the ideals of 1970s adversarial reporting without sliding into the partisan style of 2000s news coverage. Over the long run, partisan journalism undermines the faith of viewers in the people who tell us the news, rather than increasing the healthy skepticism about the people who are the subject of the news.

Julian E. Zelizer is Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He is the co-editor of Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Harvard University Press).

Comments

[XME]

I have a feeling Tim Russert would feel his most important legacy is his son!

[raker]

Personal modesty? Subtly expose inconsistencies? Oh brother. I hope when I go no one amplifies all my good points and flips all my bad points to remember me as the opposite of who I was. It's an insult to one's memory when you imply that they weren't good enough to be remembered and mourned as they were, they must be remade into something better, perfect, divine. He just wasn't quite good enough as is, gigantic access-craving ego and all?

[westcoastsc]

Sometimes the effort to seem fair and impartial keeps the truth from surfacing. The right had labeled the media "the liberal media". The right demanded equal time for opinions that were absolute b.s. The media failed us. Tim Russert came up with the simplification of the election process by proclaiming states red and blue. Rather than thinking out of the box, Tim Russert put the whole election system into a box so that it could fit on his thirty minute entertainment show. There is no way in that format that he could do the follow up which is needed to make the interviews really matter and get to any depth in discussion. If one of the Bushes people were on it they sometimes would not answer the question. I really believe that journalists have to take a more adversarial role with politicians and should not be punished for it. We need journalists who will not allow the the two party system to be used by politicians to act like amorphous liars in order to keep job stability. Any politician who is more interested in job stability than their constituency should be removed from office. Any journalist interested only in the status quo and is not able to remain unfettered by public and corporate interests in relation to the truth also does the public a disservice.

[hopeless277]

"Off the record" Tim left MUCH to be desired in a journalist. Failure to point this out is tatamount to endorsing his methods which included giving free rides to those in power. By their own behavior during his death, these 'journalists' demonstrate that their loyalty to friends trumps their loyalty to the truth. Once again we are reminded that the MSM will do what it's told to do. No matter the consequence.

[Lemeritus]

"Politicians such as Senator Joseph McCarthy had manipulated reporter's belief in objectivity by stating controversial facts that were not supported by evidence with the full knowledge that reporters would publish their words without challenging them."

This leaves us something to ponder.

Keith Olbermann called for a moratorium on criticism of Tim Russert, perhaps rightfully so. Russert was a good man, the kind of man we would all have liked to call friend, a reassuring presence. Chris Matthews called him "everyman". We mourn his passing and will miss him.

Yet, it is impossible not to wonder how -- in the 7 1/2 years of this grotesque and untenable administration -- our "everyman" failed to call Bush to task. Surely this decent man -- particularly because he was so decent -- must have known how base this government had become even if he could not have envisioned it immediately. It's this failure to (as the over-worked phrase goes) speak truth to power that hangs like an unfinished sentence at the end of Russert's life.

Martin Luther King once said, "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

[westcoastsc]

Excellent.

[brod5019]

You know what's funny? I never heard people say all great things about Tim Russert or his show "Meet the Press" until after he died.

Was he as "great" as everyone said he was? Think about it...isn't the canned response after someone dies always he/she "was a great person"...

I'm sure he was.

But a non-partisan ball buster, he was not.

If President Bush goes to my funeral and Dick Cheney refers to me as the "go-to guy" then I have failed miserably at my job as a journalist.

Everytime someone from the administration was on his show, Russert lobbed soft ball questions in their direction, with little or no follow up. Oh but I did however see him strong arm Ron Paul once.

Wow...what a tough guy.

[LutherBrixton]

"Russert was one of the few remaining reporters who adhered to the norms of adversarial journalism without resorting to partisan journalism. He asked aggressive questions, confronted politicians, and interjected his opinions while avoiding becoming a reporter from the left or the right."

That would be great if it was true.

Of course it isn't.

I defy all those who are re-writing history because of Russert's untimely death to find ONE instance of him grilling the liars in the Bush adminstration (Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld) in their patently obvious lies in the build up to the war in 2002 and 2003.

All the clips being run on NBC to show Russert's "tenacity" all surprisingly show him grilling people on the left (Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Paul Begala). Again, I defy ANYONE to find instances that exhibit Russert's "tenacity" towards the people that have caused the untimely deaths of upwards of one million people in Iraq. If Russert was doing his job as a journalist, and not soley relaying GOP lies and propaganda without question, those one million people might not have also met their untimely death as Russert did.

[katzooks]

The politics of war, beyond his interview discussions, were not Russert's to enforce. Below is a sampling of Russert's words, strung together with ellipses (mine) from his Feb. 2004 interview with Bush. ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4179618/ )

Russert: The night you took the country to war, March 17th, you said: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." .....That apparently is not the case.... when you spoke to the country, you said "there is no doubt." When Vice President Cheney spoke to the country, he said "there is no doubt." Secretary Powell, "no doubt." Secretary Rumsfeld, "no doubt, we know where the weapons are." You said, quote..."Saddam Hussein is a threat that we must deal with as quickly as possible." .....do you believe if you had gone to the Congress and said he should be removed because he's a threat to his people but I'm not sure he has weapons of mass destruction, Congress would authorize war?....There"s a sense in the country that the intelligence that was given was ambiguous, and that you took it and molded it and shaped... it and rushed to war.....looking back, in your mind, is it worth the loss of 530 American lives and 3,000 injuries and woundings simply to remove Saddam Hussein, even though there were no weapons of mass destruction?

[jomira]

"Olbermann took an extremely critical stand toward Senator Clinton and offered supportive coverage of Barack Obama, thus making his political positions even more clear.

There is of course room for this kind of reporting and it suits the current political climate of America."

I disagaree with your statement that it suits the current political climate of America. I find this type of reporting is insulting to the America people. America people want unbiased unspinned news reporting.

Although Mr. Russert had many great qualities, I did find him to be biased.

[SACVET]

Yes indeed Tim Russert was good at what he did. Most viewers never comprehended how deftly he kept the spectrum of debate from ranging too far to the liberal side while allowing the right wing talking heads to have their say. Corporate media had no problem with that. As for 'Meet the Press,' wouldn't it have more credibility if it had guests the likes of Michael Parenti or Noam Chomsky appear as frequently as the likes of Condi Rice? But you know the answer. Corporate media marginalizes the likes of Chomsky and Parenti, but not the likes of Sean Hannity or Pat Buchanan.

[sl26]

Who will replace a class act like him? I vote Aaron Brown.

[katzooks]

I find it disturbing, the casual hurling of insults at Tim Russert and the remembrances in his honor. First, I was brought up to respect life and to not speak ill of the dead. I bet many of you were, too. Second, whether you personally cared for Tim, the person or the journalist, there were many, many who did. The coverage is a simple reflection of this, which, BTW, has not pre-empted covering other important stories. As you know, the important issues generally lack coverage.

In this vein, do you spend equal time railing, with equal passion -- in venues other than the Huffington Post -- to demand media fairness and integrity? If not, here's the address to do so: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=111

Tim Russert was not a god, but a journalist who, in good conscience, tried to do his job well. Perhaps if we had a larger playing field of good journalists, he wouldn't now be such an easy target for those grumbling at his inadequacies (his bias was liberal/it was conservative; he didn't push hard enough/he was too hard on so-and-so). Lastly, I recommend you watch his 9/16/01 interview with Cheney and his 2004 interview with Bush. What these interviews may have lacked in asking the *right* questions at the right time, were more than compensated by the legacy Tim left, as he gave forum for Bush and Cheney to lie, straight-faced, to the American people.

[ultrabop]

That's like called Goebbels a "good journalist" because he gave a forum to Hitler. It's one thing to allow despots to talk on your show. It's another thing to not confront them. You give them credence.

[elderly]

I too liked and respected Tim Russert. He was extremely affable and seemed to be a man dedicated to his work and his family.

However, I am saddened by the amount of the coverage which has been given to this tragedy. The fuss made over Russert's death exceeds that made over Dr. King or Robert Kennedy or any other person whose lives made a much greater difference to the citizens of this country than did Mr. Russert's.

Further, I agree that certain journalists show real courage in exercising their privilege, for example, Edward R. Murrow who had a great deal to do with exposing mccarthy meglomania in the 1950's. Mr. Russert has no such distinction on his resume.

Again I was greatly saddened by Mr. Russert's untimely death and wish nothing but the best to his family and the people who, like me, will miss seeing and hearing him on Sundays.

[bennofs]

With all the due respect I can muster;
I am completely flummoxed by all this worship to a talking head that is now dead.

This man - and I'm sure he was a very good man - never did anything with his fame for the good of his country or mankind other than depose a lot of notable people with his brilliant lawyerly precision.

Methinks this is as much of the MSM transferring their guilt and remorse for not being, (to paraphrase the ARMY recruiting propaganda slogan) "all that they can be" and turning their backs on the Public, whom they are bound to serve, if not constitutionally then ethically.

So, Please! Can we move on now ?
Somebody change the channel.

[CAPTAINSKIPPY]

It's not reasonable to expect top journalists to double as special prosecutors; but it is true we could use another Tim Russert immediately, and if we could locate a few more soon after that, it would be very good indeed.

[Melissa]

This article proves that "Meet the Press" needs to look far and wide for a new "real" journalist. To choose Olberman or Matthews would lead to the demise of this great show.

[jbatch]

Please, praise the man all you want -- the outpouring of love from so many quarters shows he must have been a wonderful person.

But let's not rewrite history -- he was the journalist Cheney called "our go to guy" he was the journalist who said to Bill Moyers, when pressed as to why he didn't get the pre-Iraq story about Nukes, WMDs, and al Qaeda connections right said, "I wish someone had called me."

Look, waiting for calls isn't journaism -- going out and making calls the way the Knight Ridder papers and Walter Pincus did is journalism.

Being willing to let Cheney or Bush or Condi on spew propaganda while asking a few token tough questions with no follow up when the spewed canned talking points isn't journalism either.

So praise the man by all means, but let's be clear about what we need and demand from a free press -- and it isn't anything Mr. Russert offered.

[cheshirecat831]

I liked Tim Russert, but I think the massive coverage of him after his death was a bit over the top. What about those dying in Iraq and Afghanistan? Maybe if we devoted the same amount of time covering their deaths we would have more of sense of how tragic this war has been. Those families have the very same heartache as the Russert family and his co-workers. Yet they are anonymous in their deaths except for their immediate family. The media is really in need of an intervention.