THOSE of us who get a kick out of watching Tim Russert every Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" are feeling a little hangdog these days. We always thought Big Russ Jr. was tough on the powerful. Now we learn that to some Washington media types on both the right and the left, he's just a tool for the powerful.
What's occasioned this perceptual turnabout is, of course, the perjury and obstruction trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, where Russert wrapped up two days of testimony last week. Libby says the NBC newsman fed him the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, who is at the center of the trial. Russert says he didn't.
To ordinary viewers, though, whatever transpired during Libby's phone call to Russert back in 2003 couldn't be as jarring as what the trial has unearthed about Washington's deeply cynical attitude toward "Meet the Press," a venerable, 60-year-old staple of network TV and the No. 1-rated Sunday news talk show.
A former Cheney press aide testified last month that she pushed to get the vice president on Russert's show to bat down negative news because it was "our best format," a program where political handlers can "control the message."
Wow. Really? With his Buick-like physique, piercing stare and rumbling baritone -- plus his interrogatory style of brandishing incriminating documents and video in front of his guests -- Russert sure doesn't look like any flack's patsy.
But to Russert's longtime critics, this was an a-ha! moment. Arianna Huffington, who once penned the critical "RussertWatch" feature for her liberal Huffington Post website, said she attended the Libby trial last week. There she found fresh confirmation for her view of Russert as one of the media handmaidens who carried water for the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war.
"When we started RussertWatch, we didn't know he was on Dick Cheney and [ex-aide] Mary Matalin's list of ways to get their message out," Huffington told me Friday. She also heaped scorn on Russert's testimony that he always assumed his off-camera conversations with government officials were automatically off-the-record, so as "not to blindside anyone."
"That's the exact opposite of how journalists operate," Huffington said. "Russert's responsibility is to the public, unless there's some specific granting of anonymity."
