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To the family of Tim Russert I express my condolences. The circumstances of his sudden death are especially tragic since he had just returned from a trip celebrating his son’s graduation.
As is so often the case these days with media figures, separating the man from the image becomes extremely difficult, but by all accounts there was not a harder-working television journalist in America than Tim Russert. His friends and family know the real man and his humanity, the rest of us know only an image.
With news media people that sorting out becomes even more difficult. The line between reporters and actors ceased to exist some time between Walter Cronkite and now. My sense is most TV journalists are playing a role, scripted for them by anonymous corporate types in suites high above where the journalists office. Bill O’Reilly is as much actor as he is reporter, playing a role that is a defined as that of any character on Desperate Housewives or House. Rush Limbaugh seems a similar creature and only when the curtain dropped briefly during his battle with drugs did we see something of the real person behind the role.
Russert’s role was to play the journalistic equivalent to House, asking the tough questions, sometimes even badgering people and even being obnoxious to get to the heart of the matter. TV drama, of course, lets us see the human side of House, but TV journalism rarely let us see the human side of Tim Russert.
I do not doubt that like House Tim Russert had a deep desire to get at the truth. He maybe even came to relish his onscreen persona. But Russert’s death should give us pause about what now passes for journalism in America, which is confrontative, in-your-face, even nasty. That Russert and House should have such similar onscreen personalities and both be among the most highly-rated media figures in America says much about America.
Media and audience have always been part of a strange dance in which neither partner claims to be leading, but both somehow work ratings magic. The current taste for those who relentlessly track down the truth and do so in an especially grating, even obnoxious manner, says something to me about the state of this country.
This time of $4 gas, a war where no one knows the truth anymore, and a mortgage crisis brought on by shady financial manipulations even the economists can’t sort out seems to cry out for a kick-ass and take names type who gets to the bottom of things no matter how many toes get stepped on or people bruised or hurt. There is an old saying–be careful not to become the enemy you hate.
In our desire for journalists who will finally cut through the mess that is contemporary America, we have handed them a sword that lately gets wielded too indiscriminately. There once was a way America coped with this fearful possibility. It was called the Fairness Doctrine. But it was repealed almost two decades ago and now we reap what was sown back then. It is a bitter crop, even poisonous.
Tim Russert was far from being the worst of this crop, but supporters of Hillary Clinton no doubt wish there had been a Fairness Doctrine in place when Russert hosted the debates. Ironically, when I heard the news of Russert’s death I was working on a piece about how the media had helped create the current feud in the Democratic Party.
Death is always an occasion to ponder important questions and there may be no more important question in America today than what has happened to what used to be called journalism but now has become something else.
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