There are not alot of journalists on TV that make you think they have much integrity these days. Russert was one of the few.

Russert may not have always been stellar, but he has been one of the few that started the search for real answers on Iraq before it became so unpopular and he asked some really hard questions.

I hope some good folks decide to follow in his footsteps.

Wow - what a shock. He didn't seem to be at all ill, he was relatively young - wow. That is really too bad - very sad for his family.

I saw him once in NYC walking near NBC. Since I'm a New Yorker I decided not to bother him. I remember thinking there goes a good guy. There were times when I wish he had a follow up to one of his good questions, to be more attacking but that was not his nature. How ironic that in this historic elections he is not going to be around to give his input. He was genuine in his enthusiasm of the political process. We are going to miss him.

I too was shocked.

Russert may not have always been stellar, but he has been one of the few that started the search for real answers on Iraq before it became so unpopular and he asked some really hard questions.

This seems to me exactly right. There are times when I wish he would have pushed much harder--his softball interview with Bush in Spring 2004 being one example--but as journalists and interviewers go, I think he was among the very best in the MSM. This is a huge loss.

I guess this is the part where we pretend that Media Whore Number One was actually a legitimate journalist with integrity . . .

He was a power-apologist. There ARE legit news-outlets that are not wholly tainted. But the difference between a Russert and an O'Reilly is so much smaller than the difference between a Russert and an Amy Goodman.

Corporatism You Can Believe In,

What's your point dude? Oh yeah, everyone is the same. Go back to the hole you came out of.

adam, completely agree..media whore number 1. nothing shoking about death folks..happens to us all.

That is sad. Meet the Press was the only American news media program I felt moderately worth watching.

That is sad. Meet the Press was the only American news media program I felt moderately worth watching.

Russert did his job well, not perfectly of course, but definitely much better than average and without a lot of manufactured sensationalism. While people can disagree endlessly about what constitutes a real journalist, Russert's temperament was pretty damn solid. I will miss the guy.

Here's nelgom's "good guy" at work:

Washington Journalism on Trial

By Dan Froomkin

If you're a journalist, and a very senior White House official calls you up on the phone, what do you do? Do you try to get the official to address issues of urgent concern so that you can then relate that information to the public?

Not if you're NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert.

When then-vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby called Russert on July 10, 2003, to complain that his name was being unfairly bandied about by MSNBC host Chris Matthews, Russert apparently asked him nothing.

And get this: According to Russert's testimony yesterday at Libby's trial, when any senior government official calls him, they are presumptively off the record.

That's not reporting, that's enabling.

That's how you treat your friends when you're having an innocent chat, not the people you're supposed to be holding accountable.

Many things are "on trial" at the E. Barrett Prettyman federal courthouse right now. Libby is the only one facing a jail sentence -- and Russert's testimony, firmly contradicting the central claim of Libby's defense, may just end up putting him there.

But Libby's boss, along with the whole Bush White House, for that matter, is being held up to public scrutiny as well.

And the behavior of elite members of Washington's press corps -- sometimes appearing more interested in protecting themselves and their cozy "sources" than in informing the public -- is also being exposed for all the world to see.

For Russert, yesterday's testimony was the second source of trial-related embarrassment in less than two weeks. The first came when Cathie Martin, Cheney's former communications director, testified that the vice president's office saw going on Russert's "Meet the Press" as a way to go public but "control [the] message."

In other words: Sure, there might be a tough question or two, but Russert could be counted on not to knock the veep off his talking points -- and, in that way, give him just the sort of platform he was looking for.

Russert's description of how he does business with government officials came when prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked him whether there were "any explicit ground rules" for his conversation with Libby.

According to someone taking meticulous notes at the courthouse yesterday, Russert replied: "Specifically, no. But when I talk to senior government officials on the phone, it's my own policy our conversations are confidential. If I want to use anything from that conversation, then I will ask permission."

In his cross-examination, defense attorney Theodore Wells sounded incredulous that Russert wouldn't have asked Libby some questions. After all, former ambassador Joseph Wilson had gone public just four days earlier with his provocative charge that the administration manipulated intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq. Wilson had done that in a New York Times op-ed -- and on "Meet the Press" itself.

"You have the chief of staff of the vice president of the United States on the telephone and you don't ask him one question about it?" Wells asked. "As a newsperson who's known for being aggressive and going after the facts, you wouldn't have asked him about the biggest stories in the world that week?"

Russert replied: "What happened is exactly what I told you."

http://tinyurl.com/3d5hwc

All the mentions of his religion have been a little disturbing.

He seemed smarter then all that.

Adam said:

This seems to me exactly right. There are times when I wish he would have pushed much harder--his softball interview with Bush in Spring 2004 being one example--but as journalists and interviewers go, I think he was among the very best in the MSM. This is a huge loss.

I agree. I wish that Tim Russert had done his homework and that he had asked the tough questions to GWB just as he had asked the tough questions to so many others. Well, to clarify, he did ask the tough questions to GWB, but he didn't follow up with any tough questions because Russert was an All-American patriot caught up in the 9/11 scare as concerns terrorism, and he could not quite go so far as to be that tough on the president of the U.S.

But as concerns televised news, for the most part, and more than just about anyone else, Tim Russert asked harder questions and follow-up questions than just about every other reporter of televised news. (Although let us not forget Phil Donahue, who was fired for being so critical of the war back in 2002)

And Meet the Press at least consisted of an hour of serious news where every guest was allowed the opportunity to answer the question without interruption and Meet the Press never descended into the silly crap that we find on almost every other news broadcast these days.

"All the mentions of his religion have been a little disturbing.

He seemed smarter then all that."

C'mon, can't you sneer any better than that, Mr. Enlightenment? What a wonderful loving world this is.

can't you sneer any better than that, Mr. Enlightenment?

I didn't think it demanded more then a mention, specifically since it is not something that I heard come from Russert's mouth.

I have no doubt that there was an excellent journalist lurking somewhere inside Tim Russert, but the strain of keeping it inside while outwardly protecting & enabling the worst people of our time was evidently too much for his heart. Lying for a living is hard on the ol' ventricles; just ask Dick Cheney.

I liked the format of his show and how he moderated it.

I could always tell he had extensively researched the subjects and guests prior to the show. I'll miss that.

I have to say again that Russert was amongst the best for a mainstream show. That he wasn't confrontational enough is a predictable criticism on a blog like this. It's too easy.

You have to discern between softball ass-kissing and the the balancing act of keeping your show open for future interviews. Russert could have totally ripped into Cheney, for instance, and win the accolades for a day. Then he'd probably have to resign because no one would have wanted to risk being a guest in a forum which needs to have access to a wider political spectrum.

One would have to be a total fool to rely on one source of news and info anyway. Russert was just part of the media picture. In the balance I considered him amiable and professional and not some big jackass who uses pimping people's emotions to raise his own status. This country is in deep shit and we need to take stock and move away from this.

TCruise:

It's not that Russert wasn't confrontational enough; indeed, whenever he had Al Sharpton or Al Gore or Dennis Kucinich or just about any other lefty guest on the show, he was plenty confrontational. I even remember Russert forcing Sharpton to defend Harry Belafonte's "house slave" remarks about Colin Powell. But I never saw John McCain or Lindsey Graham or any other righty being forced to defend Ann Coulter or Jerry Falwell. Furthermore, the show is called "Meet the Press," not "Meet Tim Russert." The original premise of the program was for public officials to meet members of the press. It was a three-person panel, often made up of reporters from small town newspapers who rarely got the chance to interview Washington figures, and they usually had an ax to grind. Back in those days it was truly confrontational. You're correct to say that his teevee career would be kaput if he "ripped into Cheney." But why isn't it kaput when he rips into Gore? Even his questions for Bill Clinton were much more pointed than anything Bush or Cheney have had to cope with. Russert knew who is bosses were, and they weren't liberal. Compared to Hannity, O'Reilly, et al., Russert seems fair, but compared to those reporters from the original Meet the Press, he was a spineless corporate stooge.