Several of the diaries and comments posted on the occasion of Tim Russert’s death hailed him as the Journalist of the Century, the Best of the Best, He Who Could Do No Wrong. Just as improbably, others condemned him to the Ninth Circle of Hell, Zone Two (Antenora) frozen in Lake Cocytus with other traitors to their countries. The truth, as it sometimes does, probably lodges somewhere between these extremes.
Many of the high minded among us bitterly complained, armed with hundreds of HRs, not that efforts to puncture the self-righteous, egotistical piety that settled on the site like a London fog of old were necessarily wrong, but that they came too soon. Some of those voices in the wilderness were merely vulgar diatribes; others more thoughtfully reminded us of the many journalistic and moral failings (frequently linked, but to be repetitive, see here and here) that must have given St. Peter pause yesterday.
I presume that now the magic 24 hours has passed, it's OK to explore one of my fantasies about Russert.
What came to my mind upon hearing of Russert’s death was that (yet another) one of my fantasies was never going to come true. I had for a long time imagined what would have been the best Meet the Press program since its heyday (before Russert eliminated the panel of journalists questioning the guest and presenting himself as the sole embodiment of “the press.” It used to be that the day’s featured guest(s) met the press. Now the program’s audience meets the press, in the form of those frequently insightless roundtable fawnings among Villagers.)
This would be a TV news programming version of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Richard Clarke recently called for, and MTP would have been the ideal location for it. It would begin with Clarke and Scott McClellan once again repeating their apology-and-forgiveness story. Then perhaps Plame and Wilson would show up to accept another McClellan apology for perpetuating the lies about them.
And then Russert himself would apologize for his many mistakes regarding the Clinton impeachment, the past two presidential elections, the invasion and occupation of Iraq and his complicity in the Plame outing. Next, someone from NBC News, and perhaps other TV news outlets, would apologize for their cooperation with Republicans in everything from the attacks on the Clintons culminating in the impeachment through the recent hollow denials of any trace of sexism in the coverage of the Clinton presidential campaign (Nothing to apologize for there, nosir).
Then Bill Keller, and perhaps even old Howell Raines, would apologize for a library full of the Times' journalistic sins dating back to the bogus coverage of Whitewater. Maybe even Judith Miller herself would beg forgiveness for her complicity in starting a war in order to make her buddy Chalabi the King of Iraq. And on and on.
Each perpetrator would look directly into the camera and ask the country as represented by the MTP audience to forgive him or her. This hour of humility would have a chance of placing the American traditional media in a position to attain some status of respect in the nation. And Tim Russert would have taken a step toward reconciling his apparent private goodness with his public failings.
This would, of course, never have happened. It’s as difficult for an American journalist to admit to a mistake as it is to get George W. Bush to think of one. Russert would never have taken a chance on alienating fellow Villagers by staging such a televised catharsis. He was no hero of journalism. He was just a man.
But he was a lucky man, one who got to do what he wanted to do in life and loved what he did from first to last. Fifty eight is a short life for our time, but no doubt Russert would easily have traded a long life of doing something else for the short life he had. Had he lived, and had it had the courage to make my fantasy come true, he would have been a true Hero of Journalism.