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Tim Russert: What the Televised Grieving Says about TV News Now (Pssst: It's All about Them)
Last Updated: June 18, 2008 at 11:49 AM GMT By Elaine Liner Maybe we know too much now about the people who bring us the news on TV. With last weekend’s nearly wall-to-wall coverage of Meet the Press host Tim Russert’s sudden death, we were subjected to the private feelings of a lot of public people. Longtime NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, who broke into network programming last Friday afternoon to report Russert’s death, broke down in tears on the air. So did NBC political correspondent Andrea Mitchell, columnist Mike Barnicle, ABC doyenne Barbara Walters, CBS anchor Katie Couric and others who took part in tributes that ran hour after hour on NBC, MSNBC and other cable channels all weekend and into Monday.
Russert was a respected professional—trained as a lawyer and not as a journalist—but did his passing really warrant this level of coverage? Peter Jennings didn’t receive it when he died a few years ago and he was on the air longer as a reporter and network news anchor. Russert is getting the attention after his death that is usually accorded a president or a pope. One of the talking heads speaking to Keith Olbermann on NBC last night even referred to Russert as “one of our great leaders.”
Come on. It’s a fine thing that so many of Russert’s colleagues held him in high esteem, but many of their sentiments seem more appropriate for private services than for sharing with the public. All that choking and blubbing on Sunday’s hourlong roundtable of grieving on Meet the Press would not so long ago have been considered gratuitous and unseemly—not to mention Monday’s Today Show, which featured a full half-hour of Matt Lauer talking to Russert’s son Luke about his father, who had died just 72 hours earlier. Watching it felt like intruding on a private conversation.
That segment, by the way, led the morning news program on a day when 36,000 Iowans had been forced from their homes by flood waters, the largest number of refugees from a natural disaster in the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina. How did the Russert coverage trump that? It's sad that he died suddenly--of a heart attack while he was at work Friday at the NBC bureau in D.C.--but the extended wake went beyond news and into sanctification.
It also speaks of a creeping and persistent narcissism among the network news shows. We recently had to go through Robin Roberts’ cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment via Good Morning America and the death of Ann Curry’s father on Today. Devoting airtime to such matters may be deemed “public service” of some sort by the networks, but it actually presumes that viewers care so deeply about the people who read and report the news that we want or need to be there for events in their private lives.
Among the more than 1880 comments on HuffPo’s story about Russert’s death are many entreaties to let the story go, to end the fawning tributes and even to allow a few critics on to balance the coverage. This was, as one commenter pointed out, a man who hired a ghostwriter, Bill Novak, to write a book about his own father, “Big Russ.” There were flaws, too, in Russert’s journalism. His grinning bulldog style on Meet the Press typically amounted to confronting a Cheney, McCain or Obama with past quotes that betrayed some current decision or public statement they’d made. He’d sit back, listen to them defend themselves and then not follow up, moving quickly on to the next “gotcha.”
Not to disparage Russert. He was a good man doing a good job in a tough business for nearly two decades.
But there are a lot of media people, in print and on TV and radio, who’ve done better work and for far longer than he did and odds are they won’t be remembered so fondly or with such extensive fanfare after they’re gone.
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Reader Comments(8)
The coverage has become sickening. What respect I did have for NBC/MSNBC is now gone. We have 4,000 plus dead in Iraq and they don't get this kind of coverage. I know his death was a sudden but my relationship with Russert only happened on sunday mornings. He wasn't that good of late, he was one of the first to introduce race into this election. Come on NBC let's move on it's been 6 days of coverage and media heads moaning and groaning about working under such pain. Please, grow a pair please and report the news.
Posted at 11:31 AM on Jun 18, 2008 by George
Tim Russert's sudden death deserved the coverage on his own station that it got. His colleagues and friends were sincere in their admiration of one of the finest journalist's of this generation. Tim is the same age as myself and aside from Brokaw, I don't see anyone as good as him. Your comments were completely overstated in my opinion. You have a right to your opinion, of course. This is the first time I have expressed mine.
Posted at 11:46 AM on Jun 18, 2008 by Anne
I could not agree with you more about the obsession with Tim Russert's death. I was particularly diturbed by the entire half-hour of the NBC news dedicated to his death along with an hour program on Friday night. Come on!
TV gravitates to tragedy, death, and mayhem since it is attention grabbing. The networks control the programming and perhaps that's why viewership has been falling since the 90's. I will turn to other forms of entertainment and education. Posted at 11:58 AM on Jun 18, 2008 by Howie
Very well, and sensitively, stated. It's a matter of proportion, and NBC -- in shock and grief, however understandable -- lost it. I suspect Russert himself would chide them for that.
Posted at 02:51 PM on Jun 18, 2008 by Tom
You've missed the root of public feeling for Russert. As opposed to many Presidents and other famous journalists, he was someone we trusted.
Posted at 03:42 PM on Jun 19, 2008 by Mike
"All Tim All The Time" got old fast. Not only did the obituary and endless honorifics reflect the industry's self-glorification, but they represented the need to fill the endless 24/7 news cycle. Like others, Russert was a welcome guest -- occasionally -- in my home via his professional appearances, but last weekend's invasion (plus the follow-ups through the "private" funeral) were not so welcome. No wonder people are tuning out "the news." When it's all one story, it ceases to be very interesting for very long. I feel the same way when local stations give constant coverage to the snowstorm, heatwave or whatever other natural phenomenon affects our lives. Under the guise of "local service," everything else is ignored... as if there were only ONE story that anyone SHOULD care about.
Hand me that remote control please.. and just turn it off! Posted at 05:40 PM on Jun 19, 2008 by Gary
My sentiments exactly. Does this set a precedent for future coverage of TV personalities? We'll see.
Posted at 08:36 AM on Jun 20, 2008 by Jay
"While I too was surprised by the amount of media attention Tim Russert's death received, I didn't feel it was inappropriate or self serving on the part of the media. I would venture to guess that a significant number of his baby boomer viewers could relate to Russert. Despite Russert's humble beginnings, he went on to be tremendously successful. It's only natural that Russert's untimely death would have struck a chord with many of his contemporaries. Russert's viewers, as well as colleagues, needed to grieve. The media coverage helped everyone collectively come to grips with this unfortunate situation. Who is to say why someone touches more lives than others and who deserves more attention at the time of their death? Who's job is it to determine who was successful in their life? Success is very subjective and measured differently by different people. My interpretation of the media coverage was that this was a professional and human being that will be sorely missed."
Posted at 07:19 AM on Jun 23, 2008 by Sue
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