Journalists Bid Farewell to Tim Russert
KURTZ: Many of us were kind of shell-shocked on last week's program when we examined the life and legacy of Tim Russert two days after his fatal heart attack. The tributes continued this week, especially on NBC and MSNBC, starting with "Meet the Press."</s>TOM BROKAW, NBC NEWS: I think it's really a testimony to his working class background and to this country. He would always say -- I hope I can get through this.</s>KURTZ: Sometimes the grief was overwhelming. President Bush was among those paying his respects at a Washington wake. Barack Obama and John McCain went to the private funeral. And MSNBC provided live coverage of a memorial service at the Kennedy Center.</s>BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC NEWS: I'm not much for this talk that Tim's death is the end of what he stood for, his brand of objective journalism, or all that he built up. I don't think Tim candidly would believe that either.</s>KURTZ: But as NBC searches for a successor to its Washington bureau chief, there was a bit of a backlash against journalists who, the critics said, had practically conferred sainthood upon Russert. Joining us now to talk about that, in San Francisco, Debra Saunders, columnist for the "San Francisco Chronicle." In Philadelphia, Gail Shister, columnist for the media blog TVNewser and a reporter for "The Philadelphia Inquirer." And in New York, Steve Friedman, a longtime network producer who most recently vice president of morning broadcasts for CBS. Debra Saunders, Tim Russert was an extraordinary journalist. At the same time, you believe that the tributes to him went way overboard. Why?</s>DEBRA SAUNDERS, "SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE": Well, they made the TV news people look -- it was incestuous. They kept talking about what great friends Tim Russert was with a number of news people. They had David Axelrod from the Obama campaign talking about what great buds they were. This, after a lot of Hillary Clinton people thought that Russert was too cozy with them. MSNBC started off the Kennedy Center thing talking about the elites in politics. Readers said to me they felt like they are watching the Academy Awards. And I'm a Tim Russert fan. I thought he was a great journalist, but this coverage, you know, there's something about cable news where we do one story and we just overdo it. And that's -- that was the impression I got of the coverage of Tim Russert.</s>KURTZ: I have noticed that tendency on cable news. Steve Friedman, you obviously worked with Russert during your years at NBC. Is there a tendency among journalists to go too far when the deceased is one of us?</s>STEVE FRIEDMAN, NETWORK PRODUCER: Well, sure. When anybody dies young and too quickly, as Tim did, there's a tendency for everybody to go out and say what a great guy he was. This case, it happened to be true. Tim was a great guy, and he sort of would have laughed at some of this coverage. But fact of the matter is, the reason to have a cable news operation sometimes is to do what you want. And at MSNBC they did what they want. If you wanted to see the floods or you wanted to see more on politics, you could have gone to CNN, Fox, the Internet. No one was holding you hostage to the coverage. And the most important thing from a television standpoint is, quite frankly, MSNBC -- and this isn't the reason they did it -- had higher ratings than they ever had because people were interested in the great man Tim Russert and wanted to say good-bye to their friend.</s>KURTZ: And, you know, some of the other cable channels got higher ratings, too, or I wonder if it would have gone on so long. And columnists and others. You know, it wasn't just NBC and MSNBC. But Gail Shister, give us a reality check here. I mean, Tim Russert was treated as a giant of journalism, but the tributes, many of which were very heartfelt, did go on for about a solid week.</s>GAIL SHISTER, "THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER": You think? Howie, first of all, I would like to tell you, I am not wearing pantyhose.</s>KURTZ: Going back to our earlier segment.</s>SHISTER: Just so you know, yes.</s>KURTZ: All right. Thanks.</s>SHISTER: Anyway, I think there's a difference between reverence and canonization. And I, too, was a big Tim Russert fan. And as a matter of fact, we're both from Buffalo, and so we had a very big Buffalo connection. I think it got to the point of critical mass by about Wednesday. And it did -- as Debra said, it was incestuous. It's different when it's a death in the family. I give a big pass to NBC in that regard, but it got to the point where the repetitiveness got to be excruciating. If we heard one more time about what a great guy he was and salt of the earth and upheld the cannons of journalism, I think Tim Russert would have been laughing. I think he would have been embarrassed by how far they went.</s>KURTZ: But you know, Debra Saunders, I get the impression he wasn't just an inside the beltway figure because his death wound up on the cover "People" magazine, which is not exactly known for devoting a lot of cover space to mere journalists. And so it seems to me that, OK, he was praised as a nice guy, a family man, a great father, but he also was somebody who held politicians accountable. And isn't that worth celebrating?</s>SAUNDERS: Well, I mean, he was a giant, but anybody who gets a week's coverage on TV is going to end up on the cover of a magazine. Now, I'm thrilled people loved him so much, and I've heard from a lot of people who just loved the coverage, loved learning all about him. But I heard mostly -- when I wrote the column I wrote on this, 3 to 1 people were saying that they felt the media were just too narcissistic and too in love with themselves in the way they covered him. And again, I wondered if the people who were putting on these shows understood how it looked to people when news people seemed so utterly thrilled to be so friendly with the people they are covering. I know we're people. I know we end up having friends with the people we cover. But they just looked too happy about it. And I don't think that it made the industry look more credible.</s>KURTZ: Right. Steve Friedman, I've been so struck by hearing from so many friends and neighbors who don't really follow politics, who aren't media junkies, who told me that they were broken up over Tim Russert's death. And so I think part of this may simply be people liked the guy, the garbage man's son from Buffalo.</s>FRIEDMAN: That's right. And you can't discount book about his father, which made everybody talk to their father for a change. Look, when you hung up the phone after talking to Tim, you had a smile on your face. When you left Tim after going to a ball game, you had a smile on your face. When you destroyed one of his crazy e- mails, you had a smile on your face. On Wednesday night when we went home, Beverly, my wife, and I, we had a smile on our face because we said good-bye to our brother. And everybody felt that Tim was our brother. And that was the void that people are talking about. They weren't talking about the idea that he would grill politicians, et cetera, et cetera. They were talking about the guy. They loved the guy. He was a lovable guy. And that's why everybody was so involved in it.</s>SHISTER: Howie, I'd like to jump in here because, yes, he did leave you with a smile on your face. However, he went after reporters, too, and I was on the receiving end of at least one phone call from Tim Russert where he did not like what I wrote about him, and he -- I felt like he was grilling me like I was on his show.</s>FRIEDMAN: Well, Tim was no saint.</s>SHISTER: No.</s>FRIEDMAN: You know, if you were his friend, you could count on him. If you weren't or said something bad about him, he remembered. He never got mad. Even though he was a Jesuit, he sometimes got even.</s>KURTZ: Tim Russert didn't like everything I wrote about him either, but he -- I wonder if a lot of this had to do with the fact that he came to stand for old-fashioned journalistic values that are increasingly hard to find in today's loud-mouth culture. So there was some of that in these tributes as well. Now, I felt it was unseemly, you know, a day after his death, two days after the death, to do what some newspapers did, write these speculative pieces about who was going to get his job and so forth. But now that it's been a week, this morning, earlier this morning on "Meet the Press," we had the first fill-in host, a guy by the name of Brian Williams. Let's take a brief look at how he opened the show.</s>WILLIAMS: But first -- and welcome this Sunday morning -- our intention is to do the very same broadcast that we had planned before Tim Russert passed away. Tim was excited about doing this broadcast, as usual. He had done all the preparation.</s>KURTZ: Debra Saunders, at least for the rest of the election year, would Brian Williams or Tom Brokaw be a smart choice for NBC to get through the next few months?</s>SAUNDERS: I would like to see them going back to having a press panel where it really is "Meet the Press." People with, like, Andrea Mitchell, Chuck Todd, maybe throw in some people outside the network, Peggy Noonan or Gwen Ifill. Make it more the panel that it used to be.</s>KURTZ: Why is that an advantage?</s>SAUNDERS: Because I think those are big shoes to fill.</s>KURTZ: So several people are needed to fill them? You know, that was the format of "Meet the Press" for decades, but all of a sudden the show seemed to move away from that. Steve Friedman, I wanted to ask you about a piece that ran in Rupert Murdoch's "New York Post" on the gossipy Page 6, which loves taking shots at MSNBC, about Keith Olbermann supposedly wanting this job. What Olbermann did is he went on the air the night before the item was published and did this preemptive strike. Let's play it.</s>KEITH OLBERMANN, MSNBC: As for myself, not only have I never threatened to quit if I don't get Tim Russert's job, not only have I not vied for it, not only has the subject not even come up between me and anybody who will be involved in this sad task, not only did The Post make this up, not only is the very subject of Tim Russert's job not appropriate now, as anyone with a shadow of a heart would understand, but I don't even consider myself qualified for it.</s>KURTZ: Steve, what did you make of that? I mean, some cable hosts may well be too opinionated for that kind of job.</s>FRIEDMAN: Well, I don't think anybody at NBC really has focused in on how they are going to replace Tim. And I agree with Keith. I think they are stunned. I mean, the people that I grew up with and met with on Wednesday, they haven't even come to grips with the fact that Tim is gone. They will ultimately replace him. I think between now and the election they will alternate a bunch of people and then they will figure it out. NBC will miss Tim more off the air than on the air. They will find somebody to do "Meet the Press," they'll find somebody to talk about politics. But Tim was a spiritual guidance in Washington. He ran that bureau as a family enterprise. And the stature that Tim had, he could get away with almost anything he wanted to do. And that's where they will miss him. But I don't believe that Keith or anybody else went to NBC and said, "Put me on Meet the Press.'"</s>SHISTER: Howie, the night of the funeral I spoke to NBC News president Steve Capus, who said to me that they -- he is going to hire "numerous people" -- that's a direct quote -- to replace Tim Russert because he did too many jobs. He started to list all the things that he did, and when he got to about 12, I told him I got the point.</s>KURTZ: I don't think there's any question that Russert had multiple responsibilities there and that NBC, while not grappling with it right now, eventually are going to have to probably bring more than one person in. And, of course, "Meet the Press" being the crown jewel of Sunday morning. We'll be watching that carefully. Gail Shister, Steve Friedman, Debra Saunders, thanks very much for joining our discussion this morning. After the break, same-sex couples line up to tie the knot in California. Are journalists getting caught up in the wedded bliss?