american media, even flagships like nyt and the post, lost a lot of credibility in the world in 2002/03. maybe that was not correct, maybe the context was not taken into consideration… or maybe all too many american journalists were all too little objective and, as someone put it, didn’t do their fucking job.

this issue trascends the figure of russert, who may rest in peace. it is an issue very much worth talking about at length.

i suggest a special entry for this subject: the so-called war on terror is still very much on.

If you want to call him naive or kill him for not being more skeptical, fine. It’s easy to say that now forgetting the fact that we were attacked and that might have been a factor in him giving the administration the benefit of the doubt.

First off, Russert was hardly a tool of the right wing. He was a Kennedy Democrat who worked for two
of the most liberal politicians of the past half century (Pat Moynihan and Mario Cuomo) before he joined NBC news in the early 80’s.

Pat Moynihan of the vaunted Moynihan Report, which stated that blacks should be given ‘benign neglect’ and who was one of Nixon’s Democratic friends?

One of his best friends is James Carville, hardly a right-winger.

Er…um, have you listened to Carville lately? He’s a DLC Dem, which doesn’t ingratiate me to him. And a clown.

I think sore having trouble making the dme of the folks on this thread aistinction between a commentator/pundit and a journalist.

His wife was a journalist. Russert was trained as a lawyer and later working with Moynihan and Cuomo, in PR advocacy. The questioning you admire comes from his training in law, not from journalism.

I love Olbermann and Matthews (yes, I said that I like Hardball) but they’re pundits. Nothing wrong with it. Russert was a journalist…

Russert was a pundit, too.

…But the fact that he was duped by them was more of a reflection on the administration deception than on Russert.

He didn’t do his fucking job, neither…some investigative reporting skills. The job of a reporter is not to become a celebrity, but to report even the bad news objectively. Russert never asked the right questions.

I’ve been an avid watcher of MTP for over a decade and can say that he was every bit as tough on democrats as he was on Republicans. I think some of the folks on this thread are having trouble making the distinction between a commentator/pundit and a journalist. I love Olbermann and Matthews (yes, I said that I like Hardball) but they’re pundits. Nothing wrong with it. Russert was a journalist. It wasn’t his job to project his opinion onto a story. It was his job to ask the tough questions and give his subject the opportunity to answer. Let the public be judge of whether they’re telling the truth.

If you want to call him to task for not being harder on Bush-Cheney on the leadup to the Iraq War that’s your right. But the fact that he was duped by them was more of a reflection on the administration deception than on Russert.

i am sad tim’s gone, and much too early. i liked his program when i watched it, but i watched it only few times and i don’t know if belle’s observations are true.

what i think is that they are sincere, and when everybody claims him to have been a professional above all, and belle has the very opposite impression, then she has the right to reply.

we should not tell her to shut up, but argue gainst her view those who can.

From what I’ve been hearing Russert’s wife and son were still in Italy when he passed, so I can only imagine their added anguish of not being with him in those final moments. And for his father, nothing is more tragic than to have to bury your child. May God bless and keep them during this time.

My condolences to his family.

as i said, it’s a sad thing for those who loved him, his family and friends.

as an american citizen, i have respect for the constitution of the united states. tim russert did not have that same respect.

telling me to hush up is about the same as bush & co. demonizing those who questioned their actions post-9/11.

it’s sad for people who actually had a relationship with him and i will always be moved by the loss of a human life. tim russert’s. 4,000+ young american soldiers. possibly 1 million iraqis.

Wonder who they might get to take his place? Brokaw?

Now you, once again, he is a human first and a jornalist second. I wish that you would have respect for the man’s passing.

This is not the time for that. Tim Russert was a human first, a journalist second.

I will kindly ask you to have respect for him and his family at this time.

I’m under no illusions about guys like Russert and Chris Matthews, though. These days, journalists are more likely to be celebrities and are in lock step with their bosses; in his case, the ever-morphing GE-Universal. He and Brokaw tried to whack Olbermann recently over what they thought was overstepping about the Borg Queen’s departure from the presidential race.

Some reports, however, say that Russert may have died from a cardiac embolism, that is, an errant blood clot. Russert had just returned from Italy with his college grad son and wife. It was a long plane flight, and it is said that if he had just chewed some aspirin (even children’s aspirin), he would have thinned his blood enough to avoid a clot forming in his legs from inactivity.

Yall think about that when you travel.

go ahead and feel sad about the loss of a human life, but seriously, this man was a tool of the right wing, no loss to those of us who believe the system needs to change.

this man helped bush & cheney take us to war in iraq, dispense with the constitution, suspend habeas corpus and torture detainees.

dick cheney called him one of his best means of disseminating the false information the white house wanted us to hear to make us believe their lies.

he’s no loss to liberals or progressives. i’m just keeping my fingers crossed that the tool chris matthews doesn’t replace him. god forbid.

more on russert and his right wing bias:

http://mediamatters.org/issues_topics/tags/meet_the_press?f=h_hot