OpEdNews » My Tim Russert Article Generates Controversy

Tags for This Article:

Populum Tag Cloud Control Panel
	Fine tune your search to access content

Articles	Links
Diaries	Products
Events	All

All time
Last 6 mos
Last month
Last week
Last 24 hrs

From:
Month Day Year

To:
Month Day Year

Alphabet Popularity	Count ON Count OFF
This Level	Sub-levels

Tag(s): Corporate Media; Media; Media Failure; Media-News; Scandal; Tim Russert
Add to My Group

June 16, 2008 at 21:05:55

My Tim Russert Article Generates Controversy

by Steven Leser Page 1 of 1 page(s)

www.opednews.com

SAVE FAVORITES

VIEW FAVORITES

View Ratings | Rate It

There is something odd about us Americans that requires heroification upon the death of many famous people. No, heroification isn’t a real word, it is one made up by one of my favorite authors, James W. Loewen, author of the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868 . Loewen describes heroification as “a degenerative process (much like calcification) that makes people over into heroes. Through this process, our educational media turns flesh-and-blood individuals into pious, perfect creatures without conflicts, pain, credibility or human interest”. Loewen remarks that when we learn about people like George Washington, Helen Keller and other famous Americans, we get this one-sided, biased version of the person without their faults and controversies. These historic Americans don’t even seem like real people they are so heroified. As Loewen rightly points out, this disrespects both the historical figures and those who want to learn about them.

My 6/14/08 article on Tim Russert: “Tim Russert - A Good Man but Biased Journalist” http://www.opednews.com/articles/Tim-Russert---A-Good-Man-b-by-Steven-Leser-080614-336.html generated a huge amount of controversy. I received a lot of negative feedback, criticism and in some cases wishes for my death. Many more people spoke up in my defense. The origins of this controversy are completely lost on me. Russert was a person that had a huge impact on major American and global issues and politics of the last ten years. At a time when so many are talking about him, it seems only appropriate to me that everyone be able to inject their opinion concerning what that impact was. I started to become aware of Russert’s particular impact during the Clinton/Lewinsky impeachment scandal.

In my opinion, the only proper response to that scandal by someone like a Russert, or any other talking head would be to say “Obviously, the person is a scoundrel as far as their personal life is concerned, but I am not sure why we are covering this. This has nothing to do with the execution of Bill Clinton’s job as President”. That isn’t what Russert did. As I pointed out in my above linked article, Russert couldn’t get enough of talking about the Lewinsky scandal. He loved it so much he raised it as an issue when he moderated Hillary Clinton’s debates in 2000 and 2008. That isn’t what I would expect from someone that is being lauded as the messiah of the field like the mainstream journalism community is doing with Russert. Russert isn’t the only one guilty of eschewing more relevant issues to talk about the more titillating and superficial story of a President getting oral sex from a consenting adult, but he is the one whose lifetime contributions are being discussed right now.

That coverage damaged Al Gore’s efforts to become Clinton’s successor and resulted in the current court jester occupying 1600 Pennsylvania avenue who has ruined our economy, lied us into a quagmire in the Middle East and hurt our image all over the globe. Along the way, Russert and others abrogated their duties to ask relevant questions about our headlong march to war, the Patriot act and warrant-less spying on American citizens, involved themselves in a shameful effort to destroy the life and career of a covert CIA agent and on and on.

Journalists of Russert’s power and stature have a tremendous responsibility to which he did not come close to living up. If the Russerts and Brokaws and others refuse to ask the relevant questions of and about those who hold the reigns of power, how is the general public supposed to learn the timely truth about anything that is being done in their name?

All of this, however, is secondary to the main point of this follow-up article. I don’t believe people like me should be censored or pressured to self censor at any time when they are discussing what they/we believe is the truth about powerful figures. When you get to that level of prominence and impact, you give up the right to that sort of genteelness. It is much too important that we have honest discussions about what powerful people are doing and have done. It’s recognized as being so important, in fact, that under the law, figures of Russert’s stature as well as elected officials do not have the same libel and slander protection that other people enjoy. But for the record, my article of Saturday June 14 that contains no less than fourteen citations to back up my assertions wouldn’t come close to being libelous regardless of the relaxed standard in the case of someone like a Russert. I feel some level of sadness if my article hurt or offended anyone, but that sadness is tempered by my absolute belief in the need to speak the truth and have that truth reflected in the historical record.

Steven Leser specializes in Politics, Science & Health, and Entertainment topics. He has held positions within the Democratic Party including District Chair and Public Relations Chair within county organizations. Steven Leser writes for www.opednews.com, an internet only media site that has grown to become one of the highest traffic news sites in America, reaching more traffic, according to alexa.com, than all but the thirty largest daily newspapers in the US. Mr. Leser is one of the 500+ liberal pundits who, each month, are published in what has become one of the top five Liberal/progressive media sites in the US.

	Contact Author
	Contact Editor
	View Other Articles by Author

Bookmark this page: (what's this?)

(More...)

2 comments

For a living, I manage the design and construction of renewable energy projects. My hobby is sandwich repair; I also swap for parts.
JonmarkPFor a living, I manage the design and construction of renewable energy projects. My hobby is sandwich repair; I also swap for parts.

Russert "vs." Clinton

Bill Clinton was the most effective Republican president of the 20th Century in passing anti-worker, pro-corporate legislation; by legitimizing war for profit; by fueling the backlash against Democrats nationwide. Clinton's personal behavior in office ensured that the 2000 election would be close enough for his fellow Republicans to subvert it. If Russert had been harder on Clinton for the right reasons and sooner, we might have been spared the further degradation of our Republic by the criminals now holding the White House.

by JonmarkP (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 67 comments) on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 4:10:01 AM

Richard Mynick is a US citizen who, despite the best efforts of the corporate media, noticed something disturbing about how the 2000 election was decided, & felt it augured poorly for democracy.
Richard MynickRichard Mynick is a US citizen who, despite the best efforts of the corporate media, noticed something disturbing about how the 2000 election was decided, & felt it augured poorly for democracy.

I didn't see the death threats you got for criticizing Tim

Russert, but imagine they were probably along the lines of "You musn't speak ill of the dead." That's a remarkably shallow & self-contradictory kind of criticism. You should be happy to be on the opposite side of an issue from people who would attack you on such grounds.

In your 6/14 piece, Mark Sashine commented that Russert was a "loyal servant of the masters." That's exactly right. That's all he was, and that's why such a big fuss has been made over his passing. It's entirely similar to (though of course on a smaller scale) the 3-day extravaganza made over Ronald Reagan's death in 2005. The ludicrous & worshipful eulogizing was in inverse proportion to his true overall effect on the national life. It was simply a Thank-You from rich people who became a lot richer because of Reagan's policies.

Russert was similar, though not as big a fish. Whatever modest talents he had, he used to serve the financial aristocracy that controls America. He only "asked the tough questions" of weakling Democrats (especially while Bush Jr's ratings were still high). That's not "bold journalism" -- it's bullying weaklings in the service of power. Russert always let the rightwingers lead him around by the nose. When he "interviewed" them, he was a fawning little lamb. (Russert was the one who asked Kucinich about UFO's in the Philadelphia debate last October.)

Despite its constant pretenses, US society is not remotely a merit-based system. No where is this more evident than in the "news media," which is fantastically debased & degenerate. While the media pretends to be busy "informing the public" in some objective way, they are really in the business of presenting a way of interpreting the world that's entirely favorable to the US ruling class. Every single thought that might pose any sort of challenge to the business plutocracy is systematically filtered out.

Russert faciliated this corrupt process -- that's why he rose high in the system, & why the system gave him a nice sendoff when he died. // The truth about him, regardless of whether he was a good son & father in his personal life, is that he bears a portion of responsibility for the crimes of US militarism & corporatism. Almost all US news celebrities have blood on their hands, in this respect -- if they didn't, they'd never be able to rise to such positions, in a system that works like ours does.

An astute analysis of Russert's signficance can be found at this link (this same article was posted yesterday to OEN by Sheila Samples).

by Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1168 comments) on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 10:57:31 AM