Comments on: Tim Russert Dead

By: Hiram

Hiram — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 17:34:50 +0000

I don’t think Tim did put together fragmented pieces of a story. He relied on the record. He resarched, but his research depended what was on the existing record, lexis or nexis. If a piece of information didn’t exist in that particular univerese of information, it never had a chance to appear on his show.

By: Dantheman

Dantheman — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 17:15:18 +0000

Fair enough. We can agree to disagree on this one. I see what Russert did as piecing together fragmented pieces of a given story to establish the truth as it stood as of the day he was reporting or interviewing. I also appreciate that he treated everyone with the same candid approach, rather than what we see by Hannity or Olberman where the show is all about them and their personality and ideology.

58 is way too young. It is fitting that Brokaw will fill in on Meet The Press until they find a suitable replacement for the fine job Russert did.

By: Hiram

Hiram — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 16:35:59 +0000

It isn’t the excellence I have a problem with, it’s the way Russert and too many other journalists approach their craft. Russert was a lawyer and lawyers are concerned with the record. He saw his job as putting people on the record, and then searching for inconsistencies and implausibilities. The quote I used above is an example of that. The problem with that approach is that finding that two statements are inconsistent in no way tells you which one, if either is true, and truth is what we need in deciding public policy.

I suppose what I am advocating is investigative journalism, the journalism of the young Woodward and Bernstein. A journalism more concerned with truth than reconciling differing falsehoods or evasions. It’s a much harder and more dangerous form of journalism and far less likely to get it’s practitioners summer homes in Nantucket, but that’s the kind of journalism we need in these difficult times.

I realize these remarks aren’t exactly timely. Tim Russert was a fine person, by all accounts, and I was saddened by his passing. No doubt he did the job as well as he could. But so much of the coverage of his passing has had a self congratulatory quality from the inside the beltway news media, that has let us down so badly in recent years, that it just seemed to me that somebody should take a more clear-eyed and critical perspective toward the kind of journalism that Mr. Russert practiced.

By: Dantheman

Dantheman — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 15:06:45 +0000

We clearly disagree, Hiram, on Russert’s excellence at his craft. And that is OK — this is about how saddened we are by his early passing, which we all seem to agree with.

But I’m curious, Hiram. If Russert’s style was flawed, then who would you put up as a current example of journalism excellence?

By: Hiram

Hiram — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:49:54 +0000

Russert was good at what he did but what he did wasn’t very good. He was the lawyer as journalist, more concerned with consistency than truth.

By: Southern Minny Moderate

Southern Minny Moderate — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:25:28 +0000

Russert was the best at what he did — clear and simple.

By: Hiram

Hiram — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:04:41 +0000

A lot of the problem with Russert style journalism is captured in the following exchange:

“Richardson botched an exchange that began with a classic Russertism, “In your book on Page 18 it says …,” and ended with the governor claiming to be both a Yankees fan and a Red Sox fan.

“Russert’s devastating riposte: “If you go to Yankee Stadium or Fenway, you cannot be both.””

To begin with, baseball fanship is irrelevant to important public issues. But note the provincialism Russert’s question assumes. To someone who lives in New York or Boston, it may well be the case that being a fan of the Red Sox and Yankees may be mutually exclusive, that isn’t at all the case if you live outside the east. And that is particularly true if you live in a state without a baseball team at all as Richardson does in New Mexico. Russert’s riposte, far from being devastating, is just a cheap shot reflecting Russert’s inside the beltway false populism, at the expense of a discussion of the real issues which face all of us today.

I am saddened by the passing of Tim Russert, but as a journalist he was more of an example of what was wrong with the media rather then what was right.

By: Kathy

Kathy — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 03:37:48 +0000

Sunday mornings will not be the same without Tim Russert.

He will surely be missed.

By: Dantheman

Dantheman — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:07:41 +0000

This is stunning news. In a world where people like Hannity, Olberman and Beck make the news into what they want for entertainment purposes, Russert was an old-fashioned “find the truth” type of reporter. Love him or hate him, he made his career on good reporting work, not on making the stories and shows about him.

He was my favorite. There is a tie for 2nd, and it is a distant 2nd.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 23:44:43 +0000

Doesn’t matter how you feel about his work, he had a lot ahead of him and didn’t deserve to check out at age 58.

He will indeed be missed, and his shoes will be very hard to fill.

By: björnkram

björnkram — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:48:15 +0000

Very sad news. He will be missed.