Reply #53: Here's an example of Russert doing his job after Katrina when the Bush Admin was under fire....

[Garbo 2004]

Remember how the Bush Admin and RW'ers were blaming the local jurisdictions so as to absolve the Bush Administration from its failure to respond in a timely and effective fashion to a foreseeable disaster and a catastrophe unfolding live on our TV screens? (As I recall Chertoff "didn't know" there were people at the NOLA convention center until Thursday of that week when the media told him. The rest of the world knew days before, they had been seeing it on the TV for days.) The RW bloggers and RW noise machine chimed in: the locals were to blame, not the Feds, not the Bush Administration.

I saw MTP with the President of Jefferson Parish, Aaron Broussard. Clip One: http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2005/09/04/17649131.php
And then Russert's subsequent follow up interview transcript and video: http://mediamatters.org/items/200509260002

In his follow up interview, Russert cited his news organization's and blogger's "research" when it came to disputing the details of a death cited by the President of Jefferson Parish, who had criticized the Fed Gov't's response to Katrina. One can see in the second interview how dogged Russert was in pursuing the circumstances of the woman's death. (While not addressing the larger story of the Fed's catastrophic response to Katrina that we saw with our own eyes.) But when it came to the buildup to the Iraq War, Russert told Bill Moyers he would have wished to hear from those who questioned the basis for the invasion of Iraq but no one picked up the phone to call him and he didn't have access to them. Although Russert was known to pursue people when he wanted them on the show he just waited for someone to call him? He read all those newspapers in his scruplous study to prepare for his programs, but evidently he missed Knight-Ridders' reporting that seriously questioned and contradicted the Bush Administration's claims. The aluminum tubes claims had been debunked by DOE and IAEA before the war. In 2001 Powell and Rice had said Iraq was no threat (especially in terms of nuclear capabilities). One year later these same folks were talking about "mushroom clouds" and "imminent threat." Too bad Russert wasn't as rigorous in his research and questioning on the matter of taking this nation to war as he was in nailing the president of Jeffereson Parish over the details of his staffer's mother's death.

No doubt Russert was a caring family man and a good friend and mentor to many. But it was not entirely an accident that Cheney, et. al. regarded MTP as a favored venue where they could "control the message." Russert's role and function was complex. He wasn't simply a mere shill as some have said: it was more subtle and complex than that. In many ways Russert was a purveyor of an American mythology, a political mythology and also the mythology of a "hard-hitting" American establishment press whose "stars" and careers depend on their relationships with the vested interests they are supposed to be covering.