Laura Flanders: Russert (and a Million Others) RIP

[babylonsister]

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/330191

Russert (and a Million Others) RIP
posted by Laura Flanders on 06/16/2008 @ 2:38pm


If there was one topic that focused media attention this weekend, it was the death of one of the industry's own: Tim Russert. Russert's passing provoked praise and grief and mourning across all the media and a good amount of talk about journalism and its practitioners. It's no surprise. Over decades at NBC Russert, host of the flagship Sunday program Meet the Press had become a massively influential media presence.

For me one moment stood out. It was Friday, soon after the news of Russert's death broke. NBC anchor Brian Williams was interviewed on camera from Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. Calling Russert's death "an unfathomable loss", he appeared to choke up. You could hear the pain in his voice.

Watching him there -- in Afghanistan, but it could as well have been Iraq -- I couldn't help but think. After how many hundreds of thousands dead in the US's two assaults on those two countries -- what if Williams, or Russert or any of the big power news men ever expressed emotion about other deaths. What if we saw them pause and choke up – even once – at the slaughter of an Afghan family in a misguided US missile attack, or swallow hard while reporting the blowing-to-bits of an Iraqi father as he lined up to buy food or find work?

I know it's possibly a subversive thought for all those deluded believers of objectivity in journalism -- and heaven forbid we challenge convention -- but what if -- what if -- in journalism, mourning, not to mention expressing feelings, wasn't saved up just for journalists? What then, do you think?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. Get a grip

The people who report the atrocities in iraq and elsewhere are professionals who don't know the victims and who deliberately keep their emotions out of their work. That's what they're supposed to do.

But, Russert was a long-time, and, apparently, much-loved friend of these people. A friend dies suddenly or slowly, but especially suddenly, you're caught off-guard and you drop it. You lose it, and, as with Brian Williams and with Andrea Mitchell and with Keith Olbermann, you choke up and you show the public your private face.

There's nothing about Russert's passing that in any way detracts from anyone else who's died these past few days, weeks, months, years. I trust their loved ones mourned them in the same way, albeit without the television cameras, but, when someone dies, your co-workers mourn, lament, and remember, and that's exactly what they did.

[babylonsister]

3. Bite me. I't'd be nice if the media even bothered to cover events

such as this author pointed out. And that's the point. She wasn't bemoaning the fact they showed emotion. And stop your self-righteous scolding. I'm not impressed.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

4. You make no sense

You clearly didn't get it, and if you think that's "scolding," I must point out to you - because I care - that your issues are showing.

[mirrera]

2. Babies... the babies hurt in both countries, but they don't own the airwaves.

You really hit the nail on the head. It is not the grief I object to, the grief is right and good and human. It is the stark contrast of attention paid. Just that... attention paid, to what. To whom, and why. For which audience, at whose expense. Just questioning. Not the means or the motive, just the priorities.

The Camera man on top of the Hotel in Iraq, Jessica Lynch's real story, Chat the Planet's college kids, dead Halliburton employees running empty trucks across the desert for cost plus contracts, Cindy Sheehan's son Casey, locked up innocent fathers at Guantanimo, raped sons at Abu Gahraib. The list goes on and on and their silence SCREAMS.

Just sayin...

[Berry Cool]

5. If you wait for each person's death on this planet to receive exactly equal coverage in the media

you will be waiting forever.

But if you insist, keep waiting.

[mirrera]

6. Equal coverage? How about just coverage. Not even JUST coverage...a mention?