Comments on: Tim Russert On Real Diversity

By: maggie - labrat

maggie - labrat — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:22:14 +0000

If you ask me to come up with a neutral unbiased interviewer to take over MTP,Â the first one to come to my mind is Brian Lamb. I’d also bet good money that he’d never take the job.

By: Hank Barnes

Hank Barnes — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:14:24 +0000

Cultural bias is a very potent phenomenom. It is even more potent when the person doesn’t even recognize it.

You see this a lot in academia. Highly erudite egg-heads tend to swing left.

You see this in the military. Tough, crude warrior-mentality tend to swing right.

It’d be nice if journalists and academics actually heeded Russert’s words and practiced intellectual diversity and cultural diversity, as much as they pine for race diversity.

By: mikeca

mikeca — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:34:52 +0000

I have always found the News Hour on PBS presented much more balanced discussion of issues than you found on network or cable new programs. The News Hour seeks out advocates on different sides of an issue and it gives them more than 15 to 30 seconds to explain their position. You get much more than catch phrases and sound bites. The moderators who lead these discussions do ask questions, but they let the advocates do most of the talking. They don’t try to dominate the discussion or show how clever they are by trying to find got ya questions.

The MSM media people try too much to be the center of attention, to be the star.

By: Mc Kiernan

Mc Kiernan — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:41:10 +0000

Its really tragic when your father passes away at age 58, as did my dad when I was 20.

I always respected Tim Russert although I never thought he was as good as his mentor, Lawrence E. Spivak.

Russert was one of only two famous grads of John Carroll University (jesuit) in Cleveland, the other being Don Shula.

(Its an inside family joke, that irks one of my siblings.)

Surely we can assume both were searching for ultimate truth in their respectives fields. (heh)

By: Dean Esmay

Dean Esmay — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:07:15 +0000

His book, "Nixon and Kennedy," was one of the best books on mid-20th Century politics I ever read.

By: Martin L. Shoemaker

Martin L. Shoemaker — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:02:42 +0000

Possibly on purpose. If so, he’s a great actor. I used to respect him a lot, late 90s to early 00s. Somewhere around the 2004 election, I found he had just lost objectivity, and sometimes rationality. If he were a relative, I’d be scheduling an appointment with a psychologist after such a radical personality change.

By: Dean Esmay

Dean Esmay — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:41:40 +0000

Matthews used to be brilliant. He went off the deep end some time in the last half-dozen years or so I think. Possibly on purpose. If on purpose, he might be able to get more reasonable again.

By: Martin L. Shoemaker

Martin L. Shoemaker — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:32:58 +0000

Idle speculation (so far) has Chris Matthews replacing Mr. Russert. From the soul of objectivity to the soul of partisanship. Let’s hope NBC has more smarts than that.