Is Tim Russert a Journalist?
By SusanUnPC on March 12, 2007 at 4:17 PM in Current Affairs
Atrios says he’s not:
If you’d gone through Digby’s post last night you would’ve seen it, but in any case you should read Colin McEnroe’s little spanking of Tim Russert.
Tim Russert’s admission that he inverts standard practices and assumes all conversations with the powerful are off the record has been undercovered by the media, as was his admission that he squealed to the FBI right away.
Since this is Sunshine Week, it’s fitting that on Friday we’ll hear from Valerie Plame Wilson herself in a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, whose pre-hearing documents include:
- “Topic: Disclosure of CIA Agent Identity”
- “Rep. Waxman Calls for Public Accounting of Rove’s Actions in CIA Leak Case”
- “Questions and Answers about White House Security Clearances [HA!],” and
- “Former Intelligence Officials Testify About Damage Caused by Outing of Covert CIA Agent“
It’s time we focused on what happened to the true victims, not a pseudo-journalist’s phony angst over testifying, or the hyped pardon prattle about the CIA leak trial’s supposed victim, Scooter Libby. …
As Frank Rich wrote yesterday, Libby’s “memoir could be titled ‘The Accomplice’. Its first chapter would open in August 2002, when he and a small cadre of administration officials including Karl Rove formed the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a secret task force to sell the Iraq war to the American people.”
If you don’t know about WHIG, see my post, “Glengarry Glen Rove,” which profiles the members of WHIG and their machinations to market the meritless Iraq war.
Journalists like Russert abetted WHIG in marketing the war. After all, WHIG member Mary Matalin, when she advised the VP’s office about countering Chris Matthews’ views on the CIA Leak case, said, “Call Tim.” That’s because Matalin considered Russert’s Meet The Press a friendly venue for White House propaganda, from the Iraq war to the White House’s takedown of Joe and Valerie Wilson.
From Colin McEnroe’s terrific column on Russert in The Hartford Courant:
[...]
Hmmm. A Cheney adviser knows that NBC’s Russert hates NBC’s Matthews and that Russert will be helpful.
A couple of connectable dots involve Matalin’s husband, James Carville, and Russert’s son, Luke, who together launched a satellite radio sports talk show called “60/20,” a reference to their respective age groups, apparently because the title “A Giant Talking Adder and an Unqualified Stripling With a Famous Dad Discuss Big Strong Sweaty Men” was already taken by the Sci-Fi Channel.
Tim Russert and Carville actually promoted the sports show on “Meet the Press” (where Carville and Matalin regularly appear) without revealing that Luke Russert was the second host, as if that somehow removed the taint of hand-in-glove favoritism from this plug.
So Russert gets his kid a fancy gig with a famous and wired guy like Carville. It hardly comes as a surprise to think that Carville’s wife feels she has a little inside advantage in playing Russert for Cheney’s benefit.
That’s as incestuous as the ties of the wife of the WaPo‘s Howie Kurtz to Republican lobbying, which Larry Johnson has written about here a couple times. Or the incestuous nature of MSNBC political commentator Tucker Carlson’s ties to support for Scooter Libby. (Carlson’s father is a primary fundraiser for Libby’s defense.)
More McEnroe:
But wait. There’s more.
When Russert was first subpoenaed, in 2004, to speak to the grand jury in the Libby case, he and NBC made a great show of fighting to quash that subpoena because, in the words of NBC News president Neil Shapiro, “The American public will be deprived of important information if the government can freely question journalists about their efforts to gather news.” This quote appeared in a “story” on the MSNBC website about NBC’s brave resistance.
Stirring words. Only one problem. It emerged at trial that Russert spoke freely to an FBI agent about this whole matter the first time he was ever contacted. The whole pageant of refusing to cooperate was kind of a charade. He had already cooperated. I mean, shouldn’t the story MSNBC ran about NBC’s commitment to the American public have explained that Russert compromised at least some of that commitment the first chance he got?
OK. Just a little more.
In his own trial testimony, Russert explained his own unique approach to the concept of “off the record” conversations with public officials. Russert said public officials do not have to ask to go off the record with him. They are always presumptively off the record. Then, if he wants to get them on the record, he revisits the point and asks them to go public.
This is a wonderful, generous strategy, and the only problem with it is that it represents a complete inversion of the standard operating practices of journalism. …
by Ronald Scott
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