Here are my thoughts on Tim Russert’s passing, which EaBo broke here yesterday.
Not that there’s ever a “good time” for an otherwise healthy 58-year-old to go, but Tim dying this election cycle is like Tim dying during a season in which his beloved Buffalo Bills would go on and finally win the Super Bowl. And as NBC’s Chuck Todd noted, this is Fathers’ Day weekend. Tim authored a best-selling book about his dad and was known around NBC as being a family person interested in everyone else’s kids and dads. CNN’s Campell Brown shares a similar story.
I’m very impressed with what news and political people are saying. These statements go far beyond the typical “we’re sorry for Maureen and Luke’s loss”. I know we can all get hyperbolic when speaking of the recently deceased, but I get the feeling that many of these statements are authentic and would be said in private if Tim were sill alive. CBS’s Bob Schieffer waxed:
Tim was the best of our profession. He asked the best questions and then he listened for the answer. We became very close friends over the years. He delighted in scooping me and I felt the same way when I scooped him. When you slipped one past ol’ Russert, you felt as though you had hit a home run off the best pitcher in the league. I just loved Tim and I will miss him more than I can say, and my heart goes out to his son, Luke, and his wife, Maureen.
Tim took criticism over the past year for stuff regarding the Libby trial and his moderating style at the Dem debates, and some of that criticism may be fair. But seeing on TV and in print what Russert’s colleagues are saying about the man and the journalist, it is crystal clear that America has lost a tenacious, eminently fair, respected, and admired political observer, questioner, and reporter. Furthermore, this is the year Tim would be most valuable to the national dialogue – damn. I’m a big fan of Keith Olbermann, but Olbermann’s a quality journalist who synthesizes too much op-ed with objective reporting to be as centered and grounded as Tim. There are too many Olbermanns and O’Reillys, too many play-it-safe Katie Courics, but there may never again be enough Tim Russerts. Objectivity may be a myth, but I think Tim was as about as objective as one gets on national TV news.
Jay-Z said “They never really miss you ’till you dead or you gone” and before that Joni Mitchell asked “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone?” I think between now and November we’ll really find out what America had with Tim Russert. I think even those who weren’t Russert fans have to acknowledge what Russert’s body of work brought to the table and recognize his direct and indirect influences in our epistemology of American politics.
America would have been well served if TIm Russert had survived until November. In this era of polarized coverage and analysis, I wonder who the next best thing is in objective political examination?
I love Tim Russert, he gave my father back the joy of reading. I bought my dad “Big Russ and Me” for Father’s day about 3 years ago. My dad now reads about two books a week from zero. It’s a personal connection I’ll always feel with Russert.
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p>But to answer your question, “In this era of polarized coverage and analysis, I wonder who the next best thing is in objective political examination?”
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p>I think that Bob Scheifer is the next best thing to Russert. Bob is fair and balanced. It looks like at least for this week, Tom Brokaw is going to try to humbly fill Tim’s shoes. It will be interesting to see who they get after that.
bundled so much money for Bush he was rewarded with the post of ambassador to Australia, especially when you consider Bob’s tough questions in the 2004 debate:
Tom Schieffer is now ambassador to Japan, after finishing his Australia gig.
from a guy whose sister’s former college roomate’s ex husband was a John Bircher.
shouldn’t really matter–but when Bob serves up a softball like that in a debate, diverting the question away from the obvious lead-in to the Iraq War decision, Bob Schieffer doesn’t look like a titan of journalistic ethics.
complaining about the “faith-based” nature of Bush’s policy making since 1998. Indeed, there are certain lefty blogs that conspicuously note that they live in the “reality-based” world specifically in response to this.
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p>I don’t have a problem with that question.
I enjoyed Dan Kennedy’s Guardian piece on Russert’s passing; it is worth a look.
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p>Two observations made by Kennedy caught my eye. In the article he notes, “Though he was tough on conservatives, he was often accused (rightly, in my view) of being tougher on liberals.” If, hypothetically, one day an objective metric showed that Russert was tougher on liberals than conservatives, I wonder what that says about Tim, the former Democratic campaign worker? Did his personal bias skew a little conservative as he aged, or was he perhaps over-compensating, afraid of appearing too Democratic? Perhaps he had higher expectations of left leaning pols? Or maybe he had more success extracting candid information from liberals?
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p>In a comment reply to a reader, Kennedy notes the criticisms of Russert having too many off the record conversations, making Russert a compromised insider. Kennedy says, “he was far more of an insider than I would ever feel comfortable being. Ironically, his best quality as an interviewer was his ability to comb through the public record of what his guests had said over the years and use it against them – an outsider strategy if there ever was one.” And a non-partisan strategy as well.
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And we could do a lot worse than Russert. I thought his gotcha routine was a pointlessly narrow imitation of adversarial journalism, but at least he applied it roughly equally.
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p>A bigger problem was his major role advocating the myth of the Average American. After Jack Welch took over NBC he and Bob Wright promoted Russert, Matthews, and later Brian Williams, all northeastern Irish Catholics like themselves. They are/were all captivated by the nearly 30-yr-old phenomenon of the Reagan Democrat. And even though they are all multi-millionaires, they style themselves direct spokesmen for those plain folks.
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p> In Joe Klein’s last conversation with him Russert was talking “about his dad nailing a John F. Kennedy sign on the side of the house in 1960. Tim asked, “‘Why are we for Kennedy?’ And my dad said, ‘Because he’s one of us.’ And that’s the big question Barack Obama is facing,” he concluded, “Will Americans accept him as ‘One of us.'”
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p>I think that’s a major example of Republican framing that we were about to be sold by this former Democrat. And we still will be.
tblade, you are probably right about that.
The legacy of Russert will be the consequences of his actions. Few of us, in life, will ever have the influence he had, nor the capacity to direct the discourse of what our nation will decide to do.
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p>DICK CHENEY (MEET THE PRESS NBC 9/8/02): It’s now public that, in fact, he has been seeking to acquire and we have been able to intercept to prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge and the centrifuge is required to take low-grade uranium and enhance it into highly-enriched uranium which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb.”
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p>BILL MOYERS: Did you see that performance?
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p>BOB SIMON: I did.
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p>BILL MOYERS: What did you think?
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p>BOB SIMON: I thought it was remarkable.
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p>BILL MOYERS: Why?
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p>BOB SIMON: Remarkable. You leak a story, and then you quote the story. I mean, that’s a remarkable thing to do.
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p>BILL MOYERS: AND THAT’S ONLY PART OF IT. USING THE IDENTICAL LANGUAGE OF THE ANONYMOUS SOURCES QUOTED IN THE TIMES, TOP OFFICIALS WERE NOW INVOKING THE ULTIMATE SPECTRE OF NUCLEAR WAR – THE SMOKING GUN AS MUSHROOM CLOUD.
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p>CONDOLEEZA RICE (CNN 9/8/02): There will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire a nuclear weapon. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
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p>ERIC BOEHLERT: Those sorts of stories when they appear on the front page of the so called liberal NEW YORK TIMES, it absolutely comes with a stamp of approval. I mean if the NEW YORK TIMES thinks Saddam is on the precipice of mushroom clouds, then, there’s really no debate.
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p>BOB SCHEIFFER: (FACE THE NATION, CBS 9/8/02) We read in the NEW YORK TIMES today a story that says that Saddam Hussein is closer to acquiring nuclear weapons… Does he have nuclear weapons, is there a smoking gun here?
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p>DONALD RUMSFELD: Smoking gun is an interesting phrase.
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p>COLIN POWELL: Then as we saw in reporting just this morning…
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p>TIM RUSSERT: What specifically has he obtained that you believe will enhance his nuclear development program.
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p>BILL MOYERS: Was it just a coincidence in your mind that Cheney came on your show and others went on the other Sunday shows, the very morning that that story appeared?
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p>TIM RUSSERT: I don’t know. The NEW YORK TIMES is a better judge of that than I am.
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p>BILL MOYERS: No one tipped you that it was going to happen?
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p>TIM RUSSERT: No, no. I mean-
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p>BILL MOYERS: The Cheney office didn’t leak to you that there’s gonna be a big story?
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p>TIM RUSSERT: No. No. I mean, I don’t have the– This is, you know– on MEET THE PRESS, people come on and there are no ground rules. We can ask any question we want. I did not know about the aluminum tubes story until I read it in the NEW YORK TIMES.
BILL MOYERS: Critics point to September eight, 2002 and to your show in particular, as the classic case of how the press and the government became inseparable. Someone in the Administration plants a dramatic story in the NEW YORK TIMES And then the Vice President comes on your show and points to the NEW YORK TIMES. It’s a circular, self-confirming leak.
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p>TIM RUSSERT: I don’t know how Judith Miller and Michael Gordon reported that story, who their sources were. It was a front-page story of the NEW YORK TIMES. When Secretary Rice and Vice President Cheney and others came up that Sunday morning on all the Sunday shows, they did exactly that.
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p>My concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.
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p>BILL MOYERS: BOB SIMON DIDN’T WAIT FOR THE PHONE TO RING.
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p>BILL MOYERS: You said a moment ago when we started talking to people who knew about aluminum tubes. What people-who were you talking to?
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p>BOB SIMON: We were talking to people – to scientists – to scientists and to researchers, and to people who had been investigating Iraq from the start.
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p>BILL MOYERS: Would these people have been available to any reporter who called or were they exclusive sources for 60 MINUTES?
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p>BOB SIMON: No, I think that many of them would have been available to any reporter who called.
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p>BILL MOYERS: And you just picked up the phone?
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p>BOB SIMON: Just picked up the phone.
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p>BILL MOYERS: Talked to them?
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p>BOB SIMON: Talked to them and then went down with the cameras.
I’ve recommended the PBS doc many times.
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p>I don’t think Russert is above criticism and I don’t want to deify the man. Here, I think Tim was bamboozled. It’s easy to see the NYT story as a self-confirming leak now, but I don’t know how easy it would have been the morning the story broke with only hours to prepare for the Cheney interview.
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p>It’s not my intent to become a Russert apologist, he is flawed for sure. And everyone strikes out in the bottom of the 9th sometimes – even Big Papi. I would say, though, that when discussing legitimate criticisms of Russert’s work, that we shouldn’t disqualify the massive positives in favor of the rigid, all-or-nothing view that people who have failed at times or hove made costly mistakes should be defined only by their failings.
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p>Russert’s show must have been one of the most oft-quoted resources in political journalism over the last 17 years. His body of work stands as an unrivaled resource of on the record discussions with almost every important political figure of the last two decades – and it wasn’t the Barbara Walters-style softball discussions. Also, it seems to me that there are few better than Tim for election night coverage.
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p>I’m not arguing that Russert’s journalistic legacy isn’t complex or that his work is above criticism. But I do think in this era of hyper-polarized coverage, we as news consumers tend to judge the entirety of a person’s journalistic work based on what we perceive their personal biases and motivations to be.
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p>Perhaps Russert would have shown more integrity if he said to Moyers “yeah, I was tricked and used by the White House to propagate the nuclear weapon lie. Maybe I should have made more phone calls after that interview.” But who knows how that would have played out? This incident may be one of Russert’s sins, but I don’t see it as an unforgivable sin.
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There’s no dying in baseball.
But it wasn’t Russert who sent American troops into Iraq. You and I failed to stop the war as well.
I’d had a TV audience of millions and a chance to question the people pushing the war.
I think there is a fair criticism that people like Russert are deified in death and everyone comes to worship at the alter of St. Timothy of Buffalo. But the diametric opposite of deification is over-scapegoating, or resting too much blame on one’s shoulders, a la Bill Buckner. It’s hyperbolic to suggest that Tim Russert is the reason anyone has died in Iraq. Let’s not overvalue Tim’s role in the Iraq war and lose sight of who deserves the real blame for the loss of American and Iraqi lives – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al.
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p>I look around at how few people today are really informed about Iraq. Even Democrats I know who are against the war still say things like “we’re fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq”, “the surge is working” and “other countries had faulty intelligence, too”. If, even today, given the abundance of quality sources, much of the electorate doesn’t know basic truths about the war, I doubt Tim could have done something differently that would have stopped the war. A TV journalist can lead a horse to water, but would anyone have drank it in 2003? This isn’t an argument to excuse any failings Russert may have had, it’s to argue that Tim isn’t responsible for sending anyone to die. In our criticism of the media’s failings regarding Iraq, lets not lump Russert in with the op-ed cheerleading of the complicit and propagandistic Fox News class. And Tim could have asked different questions, but the message from the administration would have been the same: “WMD, Mushroom cloud, 9/11, terrorism, Saddam’s a threat”.
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p>I think many people make Tim into a much bigger scapegoat than is deserved. Tim did not hold government office. He was not an elected official. He was not a corporate interest like Haliburton or Blackwater. He was not a part of the intelligence or diplomatic community. He was not even a Bill Kristol op-ed cheerleader or a Thomas L Fieidman “six more months” type. He was not the only journalist in Washington interviewing our leaders or covering the White House, Pentagon, or Congress. In his position, he could not become an activist and protest/speak out against the war without losing his job.
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p>You and I may not have a Sunday TV show, but I don’t know anyone who has done everything in his/her power to prevent/end this war. Tim may be more influential than me and you, but he is one voice in the media and his power is many orders of magnitude smaller than that of the Bush/Cheney war machine. When you stack the sins of Russert up against the entire war machine and those of his journalistic peers, the blame that can be laid at Tim’s feet is almost equally as miniscule as the blame that can be laid on most other Americans. After all, Tim could have disseminated all the truth he wanted to, but if we as a nation weren’t listening, or if we failed to become activated en masse by that information to exercise our Constitutional rights to free speech, to free assembly, to free press and the right to vote in order to prevent our government from invading and occupying Iraq, then we’d be in the same place. We can play the what if Tim Russert did this? game, but realistically it is improbable that Tim could have single-handedly prevent the Iraq war.
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p>Tim’s mistakes will not be forgotten; they’re on the record for scholars to examine in perpetuity. And Tim seemed smart enough to recognize that he was used by Cheney with the NYT self-leak; any cognizant journalist would be embarrassed by that irrespective of saying so publicly or not. While I agree that Russert should not be canonized as perfect, it would be just as fallacious to place on him blame of deaths that he had no control over.
His family and friends deserve condolences for their loss, and it’s clear that the outpouring of praise for Tim shows many people had positive feelings and admiration for him.
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p>But “eminently fair” as a description of his practices doesn’t fit the history of what happened. Ted Kennedy’s weighty anti-war Senate speech got no mention on Meet The Press two days after Ted gave it. It gets mentioned now that he has a tumor, and the war’s lasted 5 years.
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p>From October 2002 to March 2003, Meet The Press gave preciously little opportunity for war skeptics (the majority of Congressional Democrats) to enter the discourse.
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p>Eminently fair?
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p>Russert’s choice of who got to appear on his show was polarized in favor of the President’s war, that is why Cheney’s staff considered MTP their “best format.” It’s not that Russert had a duty to oppose the war, but that stewards of the national discourse should not filter out the opposition to the President.
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p>Perhaps I’m too worried that this praise of Russert’s polarized journalism as “eminently fair” will result in other journalists emulating his practices, reinforcing the self-congratulatory groupthink atmosphere of Washington, D.C.
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p>But at the very least, the man can be eulogized without false descriptions.
Do you think that Russert made a concerted effort to be unfair or do you think he made poor decisions and was manipulated, like most everyone else, by the administration?
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p>I agree that too much dissent was (is) filtered by the media, but I the metrics of the analysis that you link are incomplete and I’m not sold on the conclusion implied. The list of MTP guests and topics of that 5-month period is incomplete and does not say how much time was allowed to argue for the war and how much time was allowed to argue against it. Also, it without looking at Russert’s war-related discussions in those MTP airings, we can’t reject the idea that Tim, being the Devil’s advocate that he is, applied proper scrutiny and tough questions to the pro-war advocates. I’m not suggesting that he did use his questions to properly voice opposition concern or that he did have an balance in pro-qar/anti-war views, I’m saying that your link gives insufficient evidence to fairly analyze MTP war coverage during that 5 month time frame.
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p>Also, what is fair? Hindsight might say that allocating time as a 50/50 split between the pro-war and anti-war sides would have been fair. Or, lefties like us might argue that it would have been fair to have 70% ant-war views represented and 30% favorable represented. But looking back at that time, the Iraq authorization of military force passed the house by a margin of 2 to 1 and the senate by 3 to 1. Given that there are not two equal sides to every story, given the executive branch’s full court press and the overwhelming favorability of congress towards military force, and given how in the dark all of us were in 2003, is it unreasonable to imagine how difficult it would be to sort out exactly what is fair in presenting the case for war and the dissent?
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p>I know that was Russert’s job, to sort out what was fair and accurate. He failed at times. But I haven’t seen any evidence that Russeret was intentionally unfair and had personal motives for pushing an agenda, rather it seems that what ends up being unfair or perceived as unfair are the result of decisions made in a faced-paced, testosterone-charged, highly propagandistic and anticipatory 2002/2003 atmosphere that, since new facts have come to light and the war drags on, have shown to be poor choices.
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p>Yeah, if he would have read and believed Knight-Ridder more he may have been more fair and prompted to dig in places he didn’t dig. But that was just one small section of the volumes of reporting, primary sourcing, and analysis coming out of the Washington. It’s worth criticizing the fact the MSM didn’t pick up on the Knight-Ridder reporting and others who weren’t regurgitating the government talking points, but it’s understandable how a person could make a mistake in earnest when trying to absorb all the available information about the Iraq situation in 2003.
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p>Certainly, his practice of putting on more Republicans and basically completely ignoring Democratic opposition was a “concerted effort.” Whether Russert intended it or not, the result was “malicious.” He had a duty and he ignored it, likely fearing the wrath of criticizing a fairly popular President post-9/11 and pre-Iraq War.
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p>He also poorly executed his interviews, allowing the admin to spew spin and completely take advantage of Russert by secretly leaking stories to the press, then using platforms like MTP as a way to say “see! We told you Saddam has WMDs!!” Russert should have done all he could to find people who questioned it, or at least asked the question “why now?” Instead, he was more worried about ratings, so relied on the administration spewing their own spin. As I’ve said before on this topic, it’s not just asking the right (and tough) questions, it’s asking the right people. Russert completely failed, repeatedly, in that regard.
.. if it was his ‘concerted effort’ or if he merely marched to the orders of others’ ‘concerted effort’. Still, if he had any integrity he would have fought it. Others did.
I don’t doubt for one second that he could have done more than he did. At the very least, he could have jumped outside the bubble a bit – I mean Washington – and promoted/analyzed the work of Knight Ridder, for example. He could have also been much, much more upfront about Plamegate and his role in it. I don’t doubt that he would have had some resistance from above his head, but I think he was too preoccupied with ratings himself to even worry about butting heads with his bosses.
600 stars instead of 6.
… per se, but I do blame his bosses. He was one flaws voice among many. The problem is those in the executive class made decisions to give voice to hawks at twice the rate of doves and made moves to silence those who were right about the war in the first place. Russert just did his job as he saw it. I just wish he saw better and took action.
makes you more of a boss than a working stiff.
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p>Granted, any VP has to dish out plenty of “Good idea, sir! That’s why you’re the President of our business!”
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p>But he was a Vice President in a corporation that told Donahue to book two conservatives for every liberal on the show. And then fired Donahue despite the highest ratings on MSNBC at the time.
Me too. But I would also say that about other journalists I like, virtually the entire Democratic (and Republican) leadership, and most importantly, myself.
Mr. Tim Russert died at the age of 58 of a probable heart attack. Mr. Russett worked as a broadcaster/moderator for NBC/General Electric/Military-Industrial Complex and attained much success over many years. He was well respected by his peers, the general public and employers. He received many awards in his lifetime and will be missed.
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p>In other news, four young people were killed in Afganistan when a bomb exploded. They worked for the US Marines/Military-Industrial Complex. As young people, they never had the opportunity to be a corporate vice president. Perhaps some never got to hold their child. They are expected to each receive a posthumous award of the Purple Heart. They, no doubt, will be missed by loved ones.
That This Week pays tribute every Sunday.
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p>In Memoriam
I’m going to do it. I was going to shut up about my real thoughts on this, but I always think it a mistake to ignore the bad and gloat on the good when a person passes. Tim Russert, at one point, was a great journalist. However, that wasn’t during the Bush administration. The Libby stuff was unforgivable, not just some minor blip. The fact that he, along with the rest of the mainstream media, never seriously questioned the administration on Iraq is also inexcusable. They all let themselves be pawns to the Bush administration and Tim had some of the single worst moments, in that regard, of the past 8 years. And I haven’t even gotten into his “gotcha” style of journalism.
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p>There. I’ve said it. He wasn’t perfect. In the past few years, IMO, he even did more harm as a journalist than good. It’s important people realize that so we’re not encouraging more of today’s journalists to be just like Tim, because that means journalism will get worse before it gets better. And we desperately need it to get better.
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p>I’m sorry he died, but I just can’t stand seeing people heap unwarranted praise on someone because they moved on. It’s not sweet, it’s sickly sweet. It just seems fake. I sometimes wish we all could be more honest about things when people pass, not only would the world be a better place, but I think it would also help people move on. So if you all think I’m being an unsympathetic prick because I’m not going to go along with the “Tim is great” parade, feel free to bring that up when I pass, because sometimes it can certainly be true. Everyone has some good, everyone has some bad – what’s important is that people are remembered for who they are, which is human.
That’s disputable. I know we on the left have been all over Tim for his flaws the last few years, but I’m skeptical that an objective argument could be made that Russert did more harm than good over the last few years. And I agree that corporate media failed to do its job on Iraq.
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p>I’m not here to argue that you should change your mind about Russert or say that you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but I wonder if you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water? You can take the position that all of the MSM sucks, but then what are you left with for news? Who, then, do you trust for good reporting? You could take the position that Russert has committed an unforgivable sin, but does that make his yeoman’s work of grinding out interviews every Sunday for 17 years, getting some of the juciest and memorable on-record quotes in politics useless?
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p>Ryan, I respect the criticisms of Russert. But the way you cast everyone in the MSM, nobody deserves praise. That indicates a rigid type of thinking that says only journalists who validate our left-wing world view are worthy of praise and everyone else is a hack. Maybe I’m wrong? But I know I fall into that trap sometimes.
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p>I guess for people who think Tim wasn’t a good journalist the last few years, my question is this: which non-polarizing* TV political journalists were better than Tim since 2001? If anyone can come up with a list, I’m betting it will be very short.
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p>You may think that being the best TV political journalist is like being the world’s tallest midget. And I’m not advocating any media personality gets a pass. But examining Russert’s peers and and looking at Tim’s complete body of work, it would be difficult to dismiss him as just another hack. I argue in a different comment that Russert’s journalistic legacy is complex, and I think you acknowledge something similar about Tim’s humanity in your last sentence. Remember that Tim did 40-something shows a year that weren’t sensational, much less damaging. For every one of Tim’s flawed interviews, it might seem impossible to find one interview that stands in positive balance to negate that flaw. But I’m willing to guess that if you go week by week and examine the 700 or so hours of Tim’s Meet the Press work, the aggregate quality hours will far exceed Tim’s low points. I doubt it’s even close. Even if you magnify the weight of the Cheney self-leak and the Plame scandal, I would bet that the good still far outweighs the bad.
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p>I don’t think you are wrong to criticize, but I have to ask, who in TV journalism over the last 8 years should have Tim Russert acted more like?
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*I really appreciate the work Olbermann has done the last few years, but I realize his op-ed and special comments are polarizing. So while I prefer an Olbermann to a Russert, I could never argue that Keith was less polarizing. Moyers is great, but he was off the air for a while and has a clear left bias. If he isn’t polarizing, Fox News has done a good job at making him polarized, at least to their viewership.
Besides being a dogged questioner, he was a Vice President of NBC–which meant he understood what the corporation of NBC wanted, and he had a responsibility to the corporation to make sure things ran smoothly, that the corporation grew in profitability for NBC’s sake and GE’s sake. Russert’s books about fathers and fatherhood did good work in building the NBC brand as a trustworthy source for consumers of information, helping NBC stay away from accusations of being polarizing.
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p>who in TV journalism over the last 8 years should have Tim Russert acted more like? David Brancaccio and Maria Hinojosa. But if he had taken that tack, I’d be surprised if Russert had made VP at NBC… nor kept his position at Meet the Press… it would have been polarizing to take the that tack.
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Another issue for Russert, he needed his guests. Russert probably wouldn’t do as well if he did a NOW type journalism..
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p>The reason I bring up the polarization issue is because if we look at the current landscape, we have the Olbermann’s and O’Reilly’s who will never get certain guests and will never get certain viewers. Obama and many Dems are rarely seen on Fox and I wouldn’t watch even if there was someone I wanted to see. I don’t know how many of the Repub presidential candidates I saw on MSNBC, but at least on Olbermann’s show, it’s very Dem-centric.
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p>Now, I’m a consumer of certain polarized media – I love BMG and other lefty blogs, I watch Olbermann – so I think there is a place for it. But what would Russert and the rest of us have gained by being more like Brancaccio? Perhaps we would have benefited by having more Brancaccios, but not if it cost us a guy who could get guests of all stripes and levels of importance to sit down for a half hour or more. NOW is great, but Senators, Cabinet members, Presidents and Vice Presidents don’t sit down with NOW.
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p>Tim, for all his flaws, had access to guests not available to other shows because he was not synonymous with an agenda a la Hannity and viewers watched because they knew that he’d be more substantive than entertainment talkers like Larry King.
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p>Tim would fail to ask questions that I want answered and sometimes miss inaccuracies spouted by guests, but I think he made MTP as one of the few places where most political observers could reach common ground and listen to what the guest had to say with out worrying about “no-spin zone” BS or snarky editorialization from the interviewer. I give him credit for making the effort of balance and neutrality, even if it wasn’t ideally achieved. I would have been far more biased.
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p>I’m sorry, but they’re the wrong guests in the first place. If people aren’t willing to go on a show because they can’t use that as a tool in their arsenal to sell a war or brand a hero as a zero, why should we give them a spot on national TV to begin with?
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p>Every decision people make ensures someone loses “certain viewers.” Russert’s gotcha journalism, role in getting us in Iraq and role in Plame-Gate surely made sure that millions of “certain viewers” stayed away, including me. Meanwhile, Olbermann’s program finally beat O’Reilly in the ratings.
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p>Ultimately, we need to be less worried about ratings and profits than we do about journalism. Journalism used to be viewed as a public good – a responsibility for the big networks, since we gave them the privilege to use our public radiowaves for their profits. It was an excellent system that lead to true TV journalism the likes of which doesn’t really exist anymore, save for a few PBS shows. It would behoove our country to at least move slightly more into that direction, demanding better and more comprehensive journalism from the major networks, than tolerating and accepting the kind of journalism Russert practiced which, as I’ve said, did a lot to get us into a war that’s cost perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives.
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p>The questions asked by Gwen Ifill during the debate she moderated remain the gold standard for this campaign. Of course, the rest of the media (including Tim) resolutely ignored that debate.
Who could fill Tim Russert’s chair on Meet the Press?
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p>Surely not NBC’s Olbermann or Matthews who have polarized the audience and lack the objectivity necessary to give MTP the gravitas is enjoys. Olbermann and Matthews are talking head entertainment/liberal shock jocks who let their bias seep as Matthews put it” up his leg.”
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p>Gwen Ifill is a pro, an A list journalist and interviewer and would be the best choice…an African-American woman who stands head and shoulders above the current crop of commentators and opinionistas.
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p>If not her, David Gregory maybe another option…but she shines over him, too.
I like Chuck Todd. How about Charlie Rose? Andrea Mitchell would also be a great pick.
Let me just get this straight. I should be happy with the MSM and Russert, its biggest symbol and while not its worst offender, someone who should have known and done better… all because that’s all we’ve got? Explain to me how we’re going to get better if we don’t demand better?
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p>News Night, Frontline, Bill Moyers, occasionally Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and a few others… if you’re talking TV or radio. Newspapers are still the best source in most other cases, though you had to look far and wide for papers that questioned the admin on Iraq.
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p>I already answered that question, but I do have to question your fear of “polarization.” There’s too much he-said-she-said in the MSM. There’s too many, ‘let’s put a Republican and a Democrat on at the same time, and we’ll call it fair journalism” moments. What it’s become is one, big game – instead of “good journalism.” It’s all about getting people off topic, gotcha journalism and sounding like less of a douch bag. With “good journalists” like Tim Russert, it’s no wonder we got into Iraq.
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p>Olbermann’s gone a bit crazy over this election, but his hard-hitting special comments and often good journalism were the few sane spots on cable news throughout the past few years. He was no less polarizing in that regard than the man he tries to emulate, Edward R. Murrow.
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p>No. He wasn’t a complete hack. But if that’s the standard of quality in today’s MSM, then we’re screwed. Specifically, I said he did more harm than good. Sure, maybe more of his interviews were good than bad, but it’s the result of each interview that’s important. It’s also what he didn’t say or do that was important. His mistakes were glaring – falling for the administration’s Iraq claims, line, hook and sinker, was completely inexcusable. It either showed an eager willingness to go into war, or a severe lack of insight and journalism. It was one of the great stooge jobs of the century by the media as a whole and, because of Russert’s stature, his hand in it was among the most damaging of them all. A guy like Russert could have lead the charge into questioning the administration’s claims. He could have had Dick and Condi on a few less times – and instead brought on the people who actually knew the hell what they were talking about; the same people Bill Moyers was bringing on at the very same time who were dilligently questioning the administration’s claims and facts, which were very different from what was being said in the intelligence community.
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p>You’re asking the wrong question. The right question is “Why didn’t Russert set the standard of employing the right questions and asking the right people leading up to and during a long war, with a Presidency governed by secrets?”
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p>Russert got himself too far entrenched with Washington and too often brought on the wrong guests, in terms of ‘great journalism.’ We don’t always need political celebrities, we need the people who truly know what’s going on. Instead of bringing those people on and digging at the truth, he brought on people who were just as trapped in the Washington bubble, as well as members of the administration and allies who knew exactly what they were doing, playing the game well and, unfortunately for us all, winning it with ease.
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p>As far as I’m concerned, bringing on anyone who’s going to play the game of political messaging is usually the wrong guest, except perhaps the occasional interview for a big seat during election time to benefit voters. Until the media makes politicians willing to be honest and not think of press as something they have to crack, there are plenty of experts who know what they’re talking about who are completely willing to say the truth instead of what advances their political party.
Obviously we don’t agree, but I think between you, me and Joel we fleshed out a fairly good dialogue about Russert and his legacy.
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p>To switch gears for a moment, I guess my deeper question about “polarizing” TV journalists is about consensus (forget about the papers for a moment). I think Frontline should be required viewing for all Americans – great journalism. But when having a dialogue with someone on the other end of the political spectrum, when you say “I saw on Olbermann” or “Maddow siad”, the conversation veers away from content and the ad hominems fly and a questions of ideology, bias and epistemology prevents us in general from having a dialogue. I know I do the same thing as soon as someone cites “Fox News reported” as a conversation starter. Many times I’ve had someone dismiss my valid point by saying “you believe that hack liberal news source?”
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p>So my first observation is that by sticking to the Olbermanns, Moyers, and Maddows (some of my favs), don’t we open ourselves up to the criticism of filtering our news to hear only voices that validate or enhance our left-wing position, a la the people who only watch Fox? Second, are we now as a nation stuck in a place where every network and cable news personality/outlet is sorted into an either “with us” or “against us” category? Meaning that because Tim Russert (or anyone on TV) isn’t left wing enough, or right wing enough for our Republican friends, a show isn’t worth watching?
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p>I ask because I’m trying to find out what are the most neutral, agenda-free appearing TV news sources where any two people from with any ideology can sit down and dive into the substance without first qualifying the discussion with a statement like “Hannity is such a right-wing hack, this interview has no merrit”? Or is the pool too tainted and are we stuck in a place where we first attack the agenda of the person/organization reporting stories and ideas that conflict with our world view.
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p>Who challenges the worldviews of right and left alike?
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p>(This Q is open to anyone.)
I’m sure people said the same thing about Edward Murrow during the Nixon era.
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p>We can’t just give into right wing rhetoric. If they say “oh, that’s liberal hack news,” challenge them on it. In discussing something with a fringe-right person, if they brought up Fox News, I wouldn’t just dismiss their point because it’s faux news. I’d rebut it based on facts.
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p>However, we – as liberals – can’t allow ourselves to be wimpy. We don’t need everyone to agree with us. There’s a certain segment of the population who will never, ever agree with us. Their brains aren’t even wired in the same way. I hate to say this, but they’re a lost cause in terms of trying to convince them to vote differently or see things differently… it’s better to focus our efforts on people who we can change.
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p>As one of my Electoral Politics professors used to say, there’s 20-30% of the population who will always vote for a Republican no matter what. They’re the people who still think Saddam was responsible for Iraq and that we’re trying to take over the world or something. If you spend most of your time and energy trying to convince that 20-30%, you’re never going to win. You’re not even going to convince them. There’s a whole, huge pie out there, so let’s not get overly concerned with the bad slice. Overall, try to think less in terms of ideology and more in terms of what’s right and what’s wrong. Meanwhile, if conservatives try to hammer away at you using ad hominems, call them on it: you don’t have to convince them they’re wrong, but you do need to make sure people realize they’re resorting to lazy fallacies to win their arguments, completely ignoring the facts. If you give into Ad Hominems, you’ve already lost. .
Did they make this much fuss when David Halberstam was killed?
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p>I don’t remember it.
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p>Russert was no journalist. He was a talk show host.
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p>Our country has needed journalists, real ones, for 35 years now.
But Halberstam was famous for pointing out when leaders made wrong decisions with disastrous consequences. He was not committed to keeping the secrets of the powerful in his pursuit of access.
…and every primary night.
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p>I’m not saying one guy is more deserving than the other. Or anyone from the average Joe to a soldier in Iraq or a TV news commentator. But Russert was a.) far more relevant to American media and politics on a day-to-day basis then Halberstram was the day he died and b.) Russert’s friends and collegues are the ones in charge of content for NBC and are probably basing much of their decision to make a big deal about Tim on their current emotion.
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p>It’s the nature of celebrity. Anna Nicole got more fuss than Halbersram, Russert, and maybe even Ronald Reagan combined.
About how a nice guy like Tim Russert can put his thumb on the scales of the public discourse, to help the President get the war he wanted.
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p>For honorable reasons, with the best of intentions.
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p>See the video here.
Daily Howler
Specifically, getting insight about what Russert believed, that he bought the nuclear threat lie.
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p>Like I said, his failures will be on record forever. But because I don’t think Russert had malicious intent, I find Russert to be of high integrity, and I think post-2003 Russert had applied healthy scrutiny to the pro-war position, I’m optimistic that, had he lived, he might have had time to publicly acknowledge the failing and atone for his mistakes via his work on MTP.
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p>I fault him for not being better on the nuke lie, but I understand how difficult it was to wade through the tainted information to find reality at that point and time. It’s not an excuse, but it contextualizes it and takes away from the black-and-white of the situation.
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p>Most critics, even Ryan above, admit that Tim had excellent qualities and “at one point, was a great journalist”. That means it was possible for him to do great work in the future and return to the excellence his critics acknowledge existed. Between that, his integrity, and what Matthews identifies as a yearning for “truth”, I think it is possible that Tim learned from being manipulated about Iraq and would have a strong desire to use his future work as penance for allowing himself to be used as a propaganda conduit.
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p>I guess what I’m saying is that Tim’s death robs him of the chance to address this criticism directly and put it to rest. He did have his chance on Moyers, but sometimes distance is needed to accept what happened. I have no crystal ball so I can’t say for sure that he would work to atone for his journalistic sins, but I defend Tim here because I think there is good reason to believe that a guy like Tim would be haunted by such an honest mistake and would want the opportunity, and would have the ability, to correct the mistake as best he could with his work.
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p>Tim’s colleagues say he was tough, but fair. I would say to Tim’s critics, be tough on him, but be fair. Hold his shortcomings up to the light, but realize he can’t defend himself and we may never know if he regretted his actions or not. Place Tim’s legacy in the spectrum of gray it belongs rather than the black-and-white terms of he was evil because he, like most everyone else in America, was manipulated into believing the nuke lie.
It is June 17th, 2008.
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p>The Moyers interview of Russert was in late 2007.
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p>The Iraq War marketing was rolled out after Labor Day 2002 (as Bay-Stater Andy Card once said, you don’t roll out a new product in August).
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p>Kids have entered and finished high school within the span of this war.
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p>Five years–even the six months since Moyers interviewed him–is enough time for a grown person to admit he was wrong. Especially a person who values “truth.”
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p>You called Russert “eminently fair” and I specifically pointed out evidence of how he gave the pro-war viewpoints the lion’s share of MTP’s audience’s time. Then you switched topics to intentions as a way to say “Tim wanted to be fair even if he wasn’t.” It’s a safe topic to switch to, because intentions are hard to read whereas actions and their consequences take less interpretation.
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p>Your arguments are veering away from established events and actions into unknowable thoughts and intangible possibilities–you are not making the case for a rock-solid integrity nor a fierce seeker of truth. Please note, I never called Russert “evil,” I just pointed out that he was not “eminently fair” and it’s pretty clear that five years with no admission of a wrong does not jive with integrity nor a desire for truth.
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p>He was a nice guy, he loved his family and friends, and he loved his country. He will be missed. But he went with the crowd, he followed the leader, and he didn’t really trust the American audience to hear and weigh the case for and against war.
I said above that I didn’t find that link particularly compelling or convincing that Russert was unfair in his presentation of the case for war.
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p>I’ll admit that when I called him fair I had in mind specifically the way he conducted his interview and I was giving no consideration to how he filtered his guests. It was an oversight on my part and it is fair to call me out on that; I should have said this explicitly in my reply to the comment you linked. However, I will say that, without watching all of the MTPs that aired in that 5 month span we talked about, I can’t make a judgement about how he filtered the argument for and against the war. I also don’t think simply listing all the guests Russert had on during those five months will give a complete indication of how fair/unfair he was because that would fail to take into account the scrutiny applied by Russert’s question.
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p>I think Tim was fair as an interviewer. I see the criticisms that he was unfair in terms of guest selection and I trust that there is reason to think that. But since I have not examined the evidence myself, I will withhold judgement either way. I’m open minded to the possibility that he never would have admitted his flaws and perhaps made big errors in the future. But I think other features of his character indicate an open mind should be kept open for the possibility of redemption. I used terms like “possible” and “would” because neither of us know for sure either way.
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