Tim Russert: The Lone American Journalist

In an age of growing Political bias in cable and network news, Tim Russert filled a void that was becoming increasingly hollow. When we wake up tomorrow, and see a future without Russert's candid pursuit of the truth, we may also see this: Be afraid, be very afraid.

When cable news grew to prominence in the 90s, Americans starving for news started turning their backs on Brokaw, Rather and Jennings. They turned in their rabbit ears and tuned in to CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. The golden age of news television has now been replaced by the likes of O'Reilly and Olbermann, duking it out each night -- a constant reminder of America's subsequent divide.

When the Clinton Campaign launched their presidential ambitions in early 2007, they embraced a black & white brave new world, warning fellow Democrats "You're either with us or against us." It's a mantra that might well be fitted for the majority of Americans in this millennium. You're either left or right. Further explaining the rise of Independents, a group that cable news finds particularly hard to define, despite what Lou Dobbs thinks. Dobbs, who champions himself as a hard-nosed Independent, often comes off as one of the most opinionated talking heads on modern television.

Meet the Press is a show like none other. It will no doubt live on with a new host and a new life. But Russert's shoes will be nearly impossible to fill. His questions were poignant and often surprising; pressing his guest to answer tough questions with answers they had not been able to prepare. No matter his guests' political affiliation, he would pose a fearless question, and then remain emotionless when his guest fumbled the answer. He had a love for political journalism and he chose to enjoy the unpredictability of the process, rather than force it into any particular direction.

He will be sorely missed. Not just by his family, friends and fans... but also in the spirit of journalistic integrity. A term becoming looser in its definition as time goes on.

Comments

[gerrylong]

My sympathy to Russert's family, and I give him credit of many enviable virtues.

But a good journalist he was not. To lionize a person with that kind of power who interviewed key people, but threw softball at the heavies in the Bush Administration when they were lying us into the war, is not good journalism. Tim Russert was not objective, he was paving the way for his continued success on air by making those neocon liars look good.

Praise him for his great human virtues, but get off the "great journalist" spin.

[janvoght]

tim russert was obviously a beloved man, father, son, husband and journalist that left us way too early...he captured the heaarts and minds of many many people in the world and the tribute should be enough to show what a void they will ALL feel! if you have a difference of opinion, you are certainly entitled, but we all know what we can write on your tombstone!

COLD HEARTED, MEAN, SELF-ABSORBED, JEALOUS, AND INSECURE...!!!

[Leper]

If you yelled louder, we might agree with you.

[RobinSeattle]

audience shares of the network news outstrip any of the cable blabbers. So while I wish people were abandoning tv news because they broadcast so little actual news, it is still true most Americans get their information there. That and Jay Leno.

You also know Tim Russert stood idly by while Claire Shipman and Ashleigh Banfield were canned for not following the GE pro-Bush line. His was a profile in cowardice when Americans needed skeptical journalists to help stave off the signal tragedy of this era, the Iraq war. Instead, he was what you could call "in-bedded (no, I don't mean "embedded")."

He blew a gasket when Arianna called him out and appointed himself NBC's political censor by having her appearances canceled in what he evidently felt was a case of lese majeste.

I wonder if Russert is so praised both as a social nicety and empathy for his sheer mediocrity. Because it is the mediocre who comprise the largest share of people anywhere, the media included. Just as George W. Bush was sold as the president you could have a beer with (an inane meme Russert was happy to parrot), Russert positioned himself as an amiable working class guy (albeit one who made millions and who sent his son to private schools) who wasn't intellectually threatening. .Meet the Press was little different from other food fight political shows. It had all the intellectual integrity of Reader's Digest, that most mediocre of packagers of literature.

[janvoght]

save the timing...isn't it more appropriate to share what good you can, when someone has lost a loved one?

[Heika]

I think that Tim Russert had a great deal of personal charm, but I don't think he did much to inform the public. He did very well-informed and energetic "gotcha" journalism that left the public as unenlightened as ever, and while I am sorry for his family and sorry that he died, I'm kind of glad that people like RobinSeattle are around to say, Get a grip and be a little more realistic. I don't see anyone saying that Russert, like the journalists at Knight Ridder was among the lone voices really investigating the reasons for the Iraq War. Sure, it's important to say that Tim Russert was personally a loving father, husband and friend, who died way too early, but he still didn't do his job as a journalist. If he had, I doubt Bush and McCain would be praising him right now, so I too would like to see the eulogies be a little less exalted in their description of his journalistic accomplishments.,

[breakfast]

brooklyncitizen says it succinctly and well.

The lionization will go on for a while. Then NBC will install another enabler and call it journalism.

[livesimply]

Did you hear what he said when Obama secured the nomination? He was very excited and inspired about how far the nation had come to be able to elect an African American (well at least a brown-skinned person.) He was joyful. As MSM media goes, he was one of the very best.

[Leper]

>>As MSM media goes, he was one of the very best.

A pitifully low standard, indeed, if he were one of the very best.

[jahzilla]

Tim Russert was a class act.

Polite, dedicated, respected and a model and an inspiration for what a good son and father should look like . . . but, and I say this with all due respect to his family and his friends, he was not the best journalist.

I respect the fact that he worked hard in preparing for an interview, but I believe he lacked the understanding for the need of an alternate set of questions should the interviewee shun or deny facts already brought to light. He was smart . . . and his look-you-in-the-eye approach intensified and reinforced the depth of that "first question", but because Russert lacked the killer instinct to go "off script" in the face of an obvious lie, I believe he has actually lowered the bar for journalists where "damned the consequences" should be the mantra for those interested in the truth.

Such incompleteness gave the impression that he was more interested in seeing the list of designed questions he had so diligently amassed, answered within the allocated time given for the interview, rather than to stop and grab onto the gifts of "Low hanging fruit", which often times, was left to fall to the ground unnoticed.

I will miss him . . . not because I was sated by his lack at actually exposing the truth (at any cost), but because I believe he was an honorable man. We need more honorable men. We also need journalists who never deviate from

[cheforacle]

While I presented this same view on another blog on this post, you have done a better job clarifying Tim's strengths and weaknesses as an interviewer. I, too, will miss him. But we need someone who can get to the difficult-to-sometimes-ascertain truths that our issues present us today. The driver's license for immigrants issue started at the Democratic debate in Philadelphia (and shattered the myth of Hillary Clinton as a flawless candidate) is instructive. At the next debate, Tim could not take an alternate response to the answer. The notion that there is a difficult-to-resolve conflict between demanding all immigrants follow the same law and the actual reality that many illegal immigrants have already gotten in and society is protected by their having driver's licenses when accidents occurred seemed impossible for him (and hence many listening at home) to fathom is representative of the type of thinking that afflicts those on both sides of the political spectrum. Sometimes the answers are not so simple.

[Mack777]

MSNBC is non-stop Tim Russert since yesterday. It is very bizarre. Making a corporation news guy into a hero . He was suppose to be giving us vital information that the rest of the world gets. But he sold out. God bless him and his family. I wish he could have been like Bill Moyers.

[DLSteinhardt]

It's like the world's gone mad.

Russert sounds like a helluva guy to have known in person, but as a journalist, he epitomized the insider who plays by his own rules.

To refer to him, as so many have since his death 20 hours ago, as the best political journalist of his age, is simply an insult to those who seek truth, rather than their own aggrandizement.

Tim Russert was, as an NPR commentator put it yesterday, today's equivalent of the back-room boss. He reserved his harshest assessments for those who did not share his often faulty assumptions, not those who answered without integrity.

Russert's questioning of Vice President Cheney was a particular disappointment.

As Josh Marshall at TPM made clear repeatedly, Tim Russert's debate questions were a model of blowhard nonsense, foisting misinformation in the hopes of tripping up candidates who were unprepared to deal with made-up or distorted facts from the questioner.

NBC/MSNBC News has been improving steadily in recent years. May that improvement now continue. Tim Russert was undeniably an expert on politics, but the most important feature in a journalist is to demand the same standards of all who appear before them. My hope is for David Gregory to take over the chair at Meet The Press.

[mcnairbo]

Oh really Mr Christensen? Seems Dick Cheney and Scooter Libber knew otherwise.

[Uselessboy]

Jeez, I hardly want to attack the guy on the day of his death, but people are making some very exaggerated praises of him.

In a country that includes Bill Moyers, calling anyone else "the Sole American Journalist" is ridiculous.

There's a huge amount of praise that Russert is worthy of. Enough said by me till it's tomorrow where I live.

[Yuma]

That was my Sunday School. I loved him !

[Playinjured]

Uselessboy, could it be that you are just not in agreement with such praises, not necessarily that the praise is undue?
Basically, maybe there are people you don't know who think Tim was entirely worthy of such praise and maybe even more.
Bill Moyers, in my opinion, would be the only logical replacement for Tim, although replacing him would be an impossibly daunting task for anyone.

[ProFromOre]

Replacing Moyers on PBS would be a daunting task, but I don't see that replacing TIm Russert on Meet the Press as being a challenge, let alone daunting.

He relied way to much on simplistic 'gotcha's' dredged from NBC's archives. In the many years I watched Russert on MTP, I never saw him acknowledge that changing a position or changing one's mind is often THE WISEST step, not a simplistic, right-wing framed 'flip-flop.'

Not in the least do I take anything away from TIm Russert a friend to many in media. It's obvious he was well liked by many. Simply observing the media's reaction tells you that. I'm also taking nothing away from him as a father, son or husband. He obviously loved his father, his family and his Buffalo Bills and his alma-mater, (I'm blanking on that right now).

In spite of the fact I have frequently yelled until hoarse at his pixelated image on Sunday morning, occasionally thrown things at him on other Sundays, his enthusiasm and obvious delight in his job kept me from turning him off 98% of the time. The same cannot be said for Wallace and the hacks at False Network News, Schaffer's insipidness on CBS or Boy George's cluelessness on ABC.

[letsgetsmart]

I have to agree with many others regarding Tim. Many say that he was a giant among lessor news people and that may have been true to some extent. He was part of something that I grew up with. Lawrence Spivak, Walter Cronkite and Huntley & Brinkley. These are the ones who gave me my sense of what news should be. I have a hard time imagining Bush making the same headway with these people watching. It used to scare politicians to have to face Spivak and crew on Sunday mornings. Maybe they had better feet on the ground reporters. The CBS evening news with Cronkite, especially during Nam, had great reporters and the best was Dan Rather. Things have sure changed. During the run up to the Iraq invasion, I couldn't believe my ears listening to Russert and the rest of the media's top people. In my opinion they were all facilitators rather then questioners. Maybe if Russert would have had a program like Spivak with a panel to question guests, then maybe things would have been different. If Cheney and company scored well on Meet the press, it was kind of like a blessing and other news people backed off.

[plooger]

Consider Tim Russert's journalistic integrity in this excerpt from Bill Moyers' "Buying the War" program, from a segment prefacing Moyers discussing with Walter Pincus what has happened to objective journalism .... (30sec) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfqr7qLBQJ4

So, I take issue with the Reagan-like deification and praise that will be heaped upon Tim Russert's *professional*, "journalistic" legacy, but that doesn't take anything away from Russert the human, husband, father or son. I do not question his love of his family, his coworkers, country or humanity.

But more recently, Tim Russert also left me with hope, hope that maybe someone will take heed of what he said during last week's MSNBC coverage of the final night of Democratic primaries...

-----
RUSSERT: We have two very idealistic men. We have two very patriotic men. But we have men with very, very different senses of what our country should be in the surrounding world. And if we can have an election with huge differences on big issues, it will be so important for our country and our democracy and it can really add even more to this already historic election.
-----

Here's hoping we can have an election -- and election coverage -- of which this Tim Russert would be proud. I cannot think of a more fitting monument and tribute.

[blueskybigstar]

I whole heartedly agree with plooger. Thank you for doing the work. He appears a shill in this. Bill Moyers is the man.

[plooger]

This perception of Russert was the problem. Tim Russert was *perceived* as an unbiased journalistic source, and so he held much greater sway, and much greater responsibility -- which is why his echo chamber called "Meet the Press" was targeted by Cheney & Co as a key mechanism in their propaganda campaign for selling the Iraq war. There will be much sad irony over the next week(s) as media personalities grieve over the loss of their coworker and colleague, to a degree not shown for the hundreds of thousands of casualties for which they are all partly responsible.

I'd have less of an issue with the MSNBC mourning and deification of Russert if any news network had demonstrated an iota of similar remorse for the thousands of casualties for which they are partly responsible. The closest any have come, and it has been YEARS, was Ted Koppel's reading of the names of casualties on his Nightline program... before it was taken away from him.

[JudyMillerDubyaAgent]

Excellent comment, Plooger. It's sad that this man died an early death but Huff Post and the NBC media machine are going way overboard in canonizing Tim Russert, making him sound like he was Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Mother Teresa all rolled into one person. He wasn't and it's extremely distasteful seeing the media (and some bloggers) publicly displaying all this emotion and grief over one member of the so-called media elite when they haven't given a damn over the thousands of U.S. soldiers who have given their life in service to their country.

[Playinjured]

Why do you think it is prime time bash the late Tim Russert? You should have made your beef before he passed, man. We in this country have to be nicer. We are so mean and nasty. Ultimately, we wonder why our high-schoolers go to their cafeterias and shoot up students and faculty. They got tired of someone's kid bullying them and they went to school the next day willing to do something, anything, about it.

[ElliotNC]

Are you suggesting that it is unpatriotic to shed light on truth?

[Querent]

Plenty of people have said all this stuff before, when Russert was still alive. "Nice" is overrated.

[ElliotNC]

Arianna wrote in her book, titled "Right Is Wrong: How The Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded The Constitution, And Made Us All Less Safe"

"The reason the conventional wisdom survives no matter how many times its lies are exposed is that shows like Meet The Press allow their guests to go unchallenged."

Also, Russert's Meet The Press had been the "administration's top choice for push-back as its lies about Iraq were unraveling, because the White House could 'control' the message more easily there."

[Playinjured]

To say Tim Russert was without credible interview history is fraudulent. Tim was not Jesus Christ of Nazareth and no one is claiming he is, but he certainly was, without question, one of the most influential, tough, fair, and profoundly intellectual persons in the history of modern media (and that's no exaggeration).

[Heika]

Speak for yourself on this one, "profoundly intellectual persons in the history of modern media." I'm sorry but that is an exaggeration, except for the "influential" part, which is certainly accurate. And in fact the main stream media is pretty much treating him as the messiah, another indication of how hopeless it is for them to do anything but pack journalism.

[brooklyncitizen]

A loss no doubt to his family and friends and colleagues. As far as his journalistic contributions, he was too much a journalist of his time- his Time being the period when media turned its back on reporting and became simply a tool of propaganda for an illicit and corrupt administration.

[AliLiz]

I agree with the comments that say Tim Russert was a man of his time...he was a company man...nice, but never the less a company man. I feel uneasy with all the mainstream press making him sound as if he was a hero and could do no wrong. Another indication that our culture is going down. If anyone says anything less than excellent about Tim Russert now, they will be considered unpatriotic. Almost like giving criticism of Pres Bush during the last five years. You were unpatriotic is you said a negative thing about the Admin...today, you will be 'the bad guy' if you say Russert was not fair.

[blueskybigstar]

Give all the talking heads new jobs, because they have forgotten how to do theirs. I am getting more and more upset the more I hear of him being lionized.

[ElliotNC]

He was a fair journalist. Take it anyway you wish. (Ambiguity intended).

[tel8034]

I hope that the MSM in honoring Tim Russert's legacy, will take to heart his last bit of advice.

PUT EMPHASIS ON THE ISSUES OF THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, AND NOT THE SENSATIONAL

My Sundays will not be the same without Tim Russert.

My thoughts and prayers go out to his father, wife and son as well as to his many friends and colleagues.

TIM RUSSERT .......... A GREAT MAN ............. HE WILL BE MISSED.