Reply #18: Same here. Thanks for this. K&R with pleasure. [View All]

[Berry Cool]

I was not madly in love with Tim Russert when he was alive, and I'm not madly in love with him now that he's dead. But while I don't think he was a saint, neither do I think he was Satan incarnate.

And I'm sick of this "Kick him now that he's dead, and WE have decided MSNBC is mourning him 'too much,' and it's time for them to snap out of it and do their jobs again" bullshit. As if anyone should lecture to ANYONE else about how long it is "OK to mourn."

And I don't give a shit that they are using their TV network to do it. We don't pay to keep their network on the air. The advertisers do. If their advertisers don't care that they are doing this, we get no say.

You want to see other news? Turn to another channel, get online, pick up the newspaper, turn on the radio. It's there for you. The news hasn't been canceled, and it isn't being ignored, and no one is trying to deliberately keep you in the dark, and awful things aren't happening in the world with people who should know not knowing about it. Turn off MSNBC and turn on another channel until they're done. They will be back to bringing news soon enough.

And it is indeed amazing how everyone with a computer and an Internet connection nowadays thinks he's a journalist. Well, until you've tried to do the actual work, you DON'T know what it's like. You just don't. That doesn't mean you can't criticize--but when you do, I hope you do it with at least some attempt to understand the complexity of what's involved. And some understanding that it is the job of journalists merely to report the truth as they see it. It is not their job to do anything else. It is not their job to send criminals to jail--not even when they know someone is guilty. That's why they sometimes have to protect anonymous sources, even at the cost of going to jail themselves. Police work is not part of the job description. They are supposed to report the facts and let the other players do the rest.

Yes, journalists are there to inform the public, and if you don't think they're doing their jobs, tell them. While they're alive. Pissing on their graves after they're dead, even if you weren't happy with all their work, is just cowardly and in poor taste.

I don't know that "no one on this site" could have done better than Russert, but I'm willing to bet that 100% of those who are crabbing the most about him now could not have.