What do Jack Shafer and Fox News have in common?
Listen to me on WBAL Radio this morning, discussing the backlash to the coverage of Tim Russert's death.
Tim Russert's passing was unwanted and unfortunate, but in at least one respect its timing was impeccable. Russert had his fatal heart attack on a Friday, at the end of a slow political news week, on the second least-watched day of television and the day before the least-watched day of the week. Furthermore, his passing occurred in the middle of June, after the primary season had ended and after the television season had ended. In short, it was a perfect time to observe his life and record his death on TV, because there was nothing much of importance to pre-empt.
Of course, it helped that President Bush, John McCain, Barack Obama and seemingly half the U.S. Senate issued tributes to Russert in the hours after his death. But even if they hadn't, MSNBC still would probably have turned the next 72 hours into a Tim Russert Weekend of Remembrance. Well, what else were they going to do — show repeats of those "Lockup" documentaries? Come on. Of course they were going to memorialize their beloved Irish uncle, their "leader" (Keith Olbermann), their "best friend" (several NBCers), their "father figure" (Chuck Todd). Not to mention the most-watched Sunday morning host and a constant presence on MSNBC during this election season. NBC even joined in, having nothing to lose but perhaps a "American Gladiators" re-airing, and devoted an hour to a quickly assembled tribute on Friday.
After Friday, MSNBC eased up a bit — there was, after all, flooding in Iowa to cover — but by and large Russert remained the big story on Saturday and Sunday. CNN jumped in and poured hours into its own tributes to Russert, which may seem odd, but not really. I'm not a huge CNN fan but I know its tastes, and Russert was an ideal combination of narrative and celebrity for its audience. Also, did I mention it was a weekend, when viewing and staffing levels for cable news are (unlike the Iowa River) at low ebb?
What I've just written should be obvious to any full-time media critic, but apparently not Jack Shafer, the longtime "Press Box" writer for Slate, whose wonderful piece from 2003, "How to Beat Tim Russert," occupies a permanent place in Russertology (indeed, I cited it in my obit on Friday). On Monday night, an irritated Shafer published a completely unnecessary rip job under the broad-brush headline, "The media overdo Tim Russert's death."
The "media," it turns out, mostly consisted of properties on which Russert appeared regularly. Shafer piled up as many examples of NBC-branded excess that he could find — "The Chris Matthews Show"! "Meet the Press"! why, even the regular "Tim Russert" show on CNBC was pre-empted for a Tim Russert tribute special!! Shafer caught his breath, allowed grumpily that "at least NBC had an excuse for its news blindness" because "Russert was one of theirs," before revving his engine again:
The other networks didn't have that defense. CNN put Russert's demise into heavy rotation. On the evening of Russert's death, Larry King Live rounded up Barbara Walters, Ted Koppel, Bob Schieffer, Wolf Blitzer, Paul Begala, Campbell Brown, and John Harwood, among others, for another round of veneration. King returned on Sunday with a "Best of Tim Russert" compilation. One place that the attention seemed warranted was on CNN's press-crit show, Reliable Sources, which did a segment. Said host Howard Kurtz, "Journalists who pass away are sometimes overpraised, given that it's journalists who do the praising, but not in this case."
Hey, hey, wait a minute, Jack. What's with this "networks," plural, business? You only mentioned one, the aforementioned No. 2 in cable news. Indeed, the rest of the TV dial seemed pretty much unaffected, devoting about as much coverage as you'd expect for a well-known TV star.
On the No. 1 news channel, Fox News, there was nothing like the coverage of Russert's death on MSNBC and CNN, aside from a generous portion of Neil Cavuto's show on Friday. Fox News, in fact, signed on bright and early Monday morning with a discussion of how "liberal" Russert was (earning, predictably, a rebuke on that night's "Countdown" as Keith Olbermann looked in the camera and asked, Couldn't you at least wait until after the funeral to bring that up??).
Shafer also tried to indict the print media as co-conspirators, citing Tom Shales' emotional tribute. Well, speaking for my trade, I think anytime Tom Shales is lumped in with any group, it says more about the accuser than the accused. There is only one Great One, and he was his usual energetic self in his remembrance of Russert, just as he's been in a hundred earlier remembrances of everyone from Jack Paar to Clayton Moore. The other examples were the kinds of pieces you'd expect from journos who knew Russert. Adam Nagourney's tribute in the New York Times probably took as much time to write as it took me to read.
I think Shafer may suffer from a related syndrome to being a "Beltway insider," that which afflicts people who live (or think) just outside the Beltway. He's so hyper-aware of how the D.C. syndrome can consume people's ethics and humanity that he discounts the very real connection that some of them (like the host of the No. 1-rated Sunday public affairs program) have with viewers — and not just political junkies either, but the ordinary folks who have been posting tributes to my web site and many, many others (including those who commented on the story by Tim Rutten, most of whom ignored how hard Rutten came down on Russert). Not a lot of those commenters were really that hung up with the amount of media coverage, so long as they could contribute in some small way, such as speculating on his successor or remembering his impact as an author, like the comment that began: "I read Big Russ and Me shortly after my father passed away..."
Shafer's gripe is that there is something "unseemly" about the fact that "his (Russert's) network, the other networks, and newspapers should continue to salute, remember, and otherwise memorialize him" throughout the weekend. Well, if you want to bet on that horse, Jack, go ahead. Me, I'm going to put two bucks on "if a bunch of media heavies want to spend a few hours paying tribute to a fallen colleague when they could be enjoying their weekend, let 'em."
UPDATE: And of course, I didn't even cover the most obvious reason CNN and MSNBC would go to such unseemly, narcissistic, self-absorbed lengths: it gets ratings!
Previously on TV Barn:
