My Conversation with Tim Russert

He was the gold standard for fairness in American journalism.

A few days ago I had an hour-long discussion about my (2001) book Bias with a a woman who teaches journalism at Emerson College in Boston. I had been invited on as part of a program sponsored by the New England Society of Professional Journalists.

I will soon send you a link to that discussion so, if you’re interested, you can listen to the entire give and take.

During our discussion I said that journalism needed more diversity, that there were too many like-minded people in America’s newsrooms — liberal people — and that that’s what produced bias — liberal bias. (Today, more than 20 years after Bias was published, there’s plenty of conservative bias out there too.)

At one point in my discussion, I mentioned that Tim Russert of NBC News wanted me on a book show he hosted (on CNBC) to talk about Bias. I agreed, figuring I was about to confront one more liberal journalist who hated the book and probably wasn’t a fan of me either. Russert had worked for New York Governor Mario Cuomo and another Democrat, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

I was wrong. Totally and completely … wrong! Russert was fair. He was respectful. And he didn’t trash my book. We had a civil discussion about it.

When I was writing my second book, Arrogance, a few years later, I asked Russert if I could interview him for the book. Without hesitation, he agreed, and again, I saw, a journalistic paragon of fairness.

On June 13, 2008 Tim had a heart attack and died. And journalism lost a giant, the gold standard for fairness in journalism.

And what I’d like to do now, is share a few things he said to me in that interview. I think you’ll find his observations as interesting and important and I did then — and still do today.

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Russert: The key to [fair journalism] was always respecting another person’s views and never suggesting that anyone had a monopoly on correctness. And that should be the centerpiece to being a journalist. You don’t go out there bringing to your profession an attitude that you know what is right for the country or you know what view is the progressive one or the appropriate one to have.

Goldberg: Does your blue-collar radar detect an elitism even amongst your colleagues?

Russert: Sure, some. Among politicians, among journalists, it exists.

I am all for having women in the newsroom and minorities in the newsroom — I’m all for it. But just as well, let’s have people with military experience. Let’s have people from all walks of life, people from top-tiered echelon schools but also from junior colleges and the so-called middling schools. That’s the rich pageantry of America.

Goldberg: It seems to be, Tim, that you’re a real proponent of diversity. You believe in it when it comes to race and gender and ethnicity because it’s better to have lots of people with different points of view covering the news.

Russert: I’m a great believe in racial diversity and gender diversity, but you need cultural diversity, you need ideological diversity. You need it.

Goldberg: Why the closed-mindedness when the subject comes around to media bias?There are a whole bunch of people in the world of journalism and the world of academia who just shut the discussion down.

Russert: That, to me, is totally contrary to who we’re supposed to be as journalists. My view was, invite Bernard Goldberg and Bias on my show. This is central to who we are. Let’s talk about it.

Goldberg: When I was on your show we talked, off the air, during a commercial break, about the op-ed I wrote in the Wall Street Journal back in 1996 about liberal bias in the news, which caused quite a furor. You told me that you actually passed the op-ed around the newsroom in Washington. Do you remember that?

Russert: The first person I talked to that morning was Tom Brokaw, and I said, “Did you see the piece?” And he said, “I sure did.” I told him that I was going to give it out down here [in Washington.] I talked to people about it. I said, “We have to engage on this issue. It is imperative that we talk about this issue.” If someone suggested there was anti-black bias, an anti-gay bias, and anti-American bias, we’d sit and say, “Let’s talk about this; let’s tackle it.” Well, if there’s a liberal bias or a cultural bias we have to sit up and tackle and discuss it. We have got to do these things.

Goldberg: When you get to the big social issues — whether it’s race or gender or feminism or gay rights — I think journalists see conservatives correctly as conservative, but these liberals as middle of the road.

Russert: I think this is the most import challenge confronting journalists: There is no preferred position. … To a journalist covering this country there should not be a  preferred position on abortion, a preferred position on gay marriage, a preferred position on gun control, a preferred position on campaign finance reform. … If you’re for abortion rights, for gun control, for campaign finance reform, [some journalists think] that’s a mainstream position and those opposed to it are on the fringe, and that’s just not the way reporters should approach issues.

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Tim was open-minded about what I wrote in Bias. Most journalists weren’t. An anonymous former CBS News colleague told Howard Kurtz, then writing for the Washington Post, that I was a “traitor” for writing the book. Another former colleague, who held an important position at CBS New, told a friend of mine that I was a “bastard” — even though he happily said he hadn’t read the book and had no intention of reading it.

Sticks and stones may break my bones …

Tim Russert was nothing like those people. He was an honest, open-minded journalist. We need more like him.

I miss him personally — and I miss his contributions to journalism.