(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . It's time to stop canonizing Tim Russert, Iraq War enabler and phony journalist [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-09-19 Cross-posted on My Substack, The Janovsky Report. Please consider subscribing (free or paid). Thanks ************************ No. It is definitely not “too soon.” Tim Russert trends whenever anything awful happens on Meet the Press. It happened regularly when Chuck Todd produced one of his frequent offenses against journalism, and it happened Sunday in the wake of Kristen Welker’s Trump interview. Why does the late Russert trend? Because of the false mythology that he was some sort of great journalist. Legions of posters write about how Russert must be rolling in his grave, as though he is the role model to whom Todd, Welker (and don’t forget the terrible David Gregory) must aspire. But Charlie Pierce remembers how awful Russert was, writing: Saying you miss Tim Russert is another way of saying you don't want Meet The Press to be any better than it is now. Charlie has had it with the Russert canonization: If one more person waxes nostalgic for the good old days on MTP with Tim Russert, I may Elvis this monitor screen. An aide to Dick Cheney said UNDER OATH that his MTP was the preferred launching pad for whatever bullshit that the Avignon Presidency wanted launched. Won’t you please help save Charlie’s screen by stopping the phony hagiography. Let’s look at how bad he was: As the final question of an October 31, 2007 Democratic Presidential debate Tim Russert asked: "There's been a lot of discussion about the Democrats and the issue of faith and values. I want to ask you a simple question. Senator Obama, what is your favorite Bible verse?" The, so as to be “fair and objective,” he gave them all a chance to be falsely pious. That’s hard-hitting journalism, folks. Gets right to the heart of the issues of the day. Writing at the time, Paul Waldman summed up Russert's problem: Russert's Bible question encapsulates everything wrong with him, and with our political coverage more generally. It seeks to make candidates look bad rather than finding out something important about them (if you want to explore a candidate's religious beliefs, you don't do it in pop-quiz form and give them just ten seconds to answer). It substitutes the personal anecdote for the policy position, the sound-bite for the substantive answer. It distills the debate into a series of allegedly symbolic, supposedly meaningful moments that can be replayed. Here are some other examples of how Russert failed: Eric Alterman, Feb. 12, 2004, on Russert’s selective attack dog mode: “True, Russert can be hard on his guests, as any number of Democratic presidential candidates from John Edwards to Howard Dean to Wesley Clark can attest. But another Tim Russert seems to emerge when faced with the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney – who so frequently misled both his host and the country the last time he appeared on the show that the White House itself all-but repudiated his remarks – and most particularly President Bush. At these moments Russert becomes, by his own admission "respectful" of the office, and turns into – let's say it: a pussycat.” The LA Times, 2007 on how the Cheney-Bush administration used Russert: A former Cheney press aide testified last month that she pushed to get the vice president on Russert’s show to bat down negative news because it was “our best format,” a program where political handlers can “control the message.” Paul Waldman’s 2007 article, linked above, showed how Russert shamelessly exploited his Buffalo, supposed blue-collar origins at every opportunity, including trying to escape responsibility for his Iraq War failures: When Bill Moyers asked Russert whether he relied too much on the word of Bush administration officials during the run-up to the Iraq War, Russert replied, "Look, I'm a blue-collar guy from Buffalo. I know who my sources are. I work 'em very hard. It's the mid-level people that tell you the truth." So I let the higher ups lie. And hey, Did I mention I’m from the mean streets of Buffalo? Did you know It’s cold there? Russert admitted not being a real journalist when he said this in the Libby trial: According to The Washington Post, Russert testified that "when any senior government official calls him, they are presumptively off the record," saying: "when I talk to senior government officials on the phone, it's my own policy our conversations are confidential. If I want to use anything from that conversation, then I will ask permission."[20] I’m a lawyer, not a journalist, but I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work. ​​​​​​​As far as protecting sources? The Libby trial again. In a posthumous commentary, the L.A. Times wrote that, "Like former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Russert was one of the high-level Washington journalists who came out of the Libby trial looking worse than shabby." The article's author, Tim Rutten, argued that although Russert and NBC had claimed that these conversations were protected by journalistic privilege, "it emerged under examination [that] Russert already had sung like a choirboy to the FBI concerning his conversation with Libby—and had so voluntarily from the first moment the Feds contacted him. All the litigation was for the sake of image and because the journalistic conventions required it As for being non-partisan? It was revealed posthumously that Russert himself was a 30 year anonymous source for the right wing columnist, Robert Novak. Remember Novak? The guy who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent? Alterman’s comment about differential treatment of Ds and Rs makes even more sense in light of that. Considering everything, Russert was not even better than Todd or Gregory, let alone a paragon of journalism. Awful as they were, did Chuck or David help get us into a disastrous war? Did they funnel info to a right wing columnist? As for the rise of Trump — The New York Times and CNN bear as much or more responsibility as Chuck. And as for Welker, yes the Trump interview was awful and should never have happened, but it did result in Trump admitting to his crimes in several more ways, as Lawerence O’Donnell showed last night. At the very least, for the sake of Charlie Pierce’s monitor screen, please stop the Tim Russert hagiography. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/19/2193837/-It-s-time-to-stop-canonizing-Tim-Russert-Iraq-War-enabler-and-phony-journalist Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/