Reply #81: Good guy, maybe. Good journalist, no way

[janet118]

The excerpt below from Bill Moyers' documentary, "Buying the War," is one reason I do not think Tim Russert was a journalist in any sense of the word. If you believe today's wall-to-wall news coverage about Russert, he was a great son, husband and father. And his colleagues obviously respect him for his treatment of them in the workplace. Those are important character traits.

The difficulty I have with all the over the top eulogies is Russert's promotion to God's gift to journalism. He was NOT a fair, competent and trusted journalist and, as the news director at NBC, he did NOT elevated the network's coverage of national politics. NBC news, owned by GE, is still shallow and confrontational and divisive.

NOTE: To his credit, he was one of the few representatives of any of the networks who even agreed to be interviewed for this documentary.

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.

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.

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.