Journalism’s Tim Russert Problem
by Pierre Tristam
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/17/9674/My sympathies go to Tim Russert’s family. My father died the same way: massive heart attack in the middle of the day, in the prime of his life (he was 46, Russert was 58). Shock doesn’t begin to describe the effect on those who stay behind. Try anger, try a sense of loss that, contrary to greeting-card drivel, never fades until, I expect, one’s own final collapse. Russert wasn’t family, but it’s fair to say, as the casket-lidded lines at the end of obituaries usually do, that his survivors include the 3 million viewers who tuned in every Sunday to watch “Meet the Press,” and even the procession of politicians who’ve been squirming their way through his show since 1991. Sadly for us, television personalities can seem closer to us than family members. Russert, however, never had that effect on me.
Respect for the man aside, there’s a matter of respecting journalism when assessing Russert’s place in the trade. That respect has been lacking in the almost universally fawning tributes to Russert and the craft he represented. Journalists and politicians from the president on down have formed yet another procession of praise and prostrations worthy of, say, Diana or Elvis. But Tim Russert?
That’s what journalism as we know it today is, primarily: an adjunct to the cult of celebrity, a shareholder in the business of image management to protect, foremost, the business of America. When the powerful pay tribute to Russert (”he was an institution in both news and politics for more than two decades,” were President Bush’s autopilot words) they’re paying tribute to themselves — to the establishment Russert represented, defended and, unfortunately for us, encrusted.
You expect politics to be a game between scoundrels, to be “the art of governing mankind by deceiving them,” as Isaac Disraeli (Benjamin’s son) put it. You don’t expect journalists to enable the fraud, but to unravel it, at least occasionally. Russert’s reputation rested on the no-nonsense interview designed to do just that. It was more reputation than reality. Since the Age of Reagan, the perception of tough journalism has paralleled the perception of integrity in politics when, all along, politics and journalism have been complicit in legitimizing spin — interpretation ahead of fact. In more honest days, we’d call that propaganda. But that’s one of those “shrill” words not to be used in polite company, and Russert’s court was nothing if not a weekly oath to the appropriate.
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