Tim Russert

There are stars in television news, just as in the dramas, melodramas and other entertainment. The stars come and go, but occasionally a solidly ordinary person emerges, getting notice not through flash and star quality, but by virtue of his quality as a man and reporter. Tim Russert is gone at 58, a tragedy for his family and a loss for his profession.

I have watched him a good deal lately, on NBC and on MSNBC, in this important election year. Never have I seen him other than reasonable, courteous to his interviewees and solidly grounded in the topic at hand. The campaign for president will lack an important measuring voice and presence.

Unintentional Irony

On CBS Sunday Morning today, there was an interesting commentary regarding the breathtaking news this week that former Presidential Press Secretary Scott McClellan had criticized his former boss for, well, just about every thing that George W. Bush did while McClellan was defending administration policies.

In a caustic opinion piece, legal analyst Andrew Cohen dryly observed that a certain irony attached to the outrage at a press secretary supporting administration policies to the point of spreading disinformation, at least, and occasionally outright untruths.

Cohen seized on a related news item, a story that the Public Relations Society of America charges that Scott McClellan violated PR “ethics standards.” A PR representative who “spins” or suppresses the truth of his boss’s actions? Who ever heard of such a thing. The “ethics” of public relations are in the same league as “student athlete” and “military intelligence.”

A quote from Cohen:

Apparently, an industry the very essence of which is to try to convince people that a turkey is really an eagle has a rule that condemns lying.

Wonderful. The same could be said for the advertising industry that provides the money making possible CBS Sunday Morning and many other good shows, as well as the litter of vast wasteland detritus making up the bulk of programming. Another sign that politics and entertainment have very similar standards when it comes to defending against truth, balance and honesty.

Dickensian Nostalgia

Sunday night, we watched the third and final episode of PBS’s Masterpiece production, Cranford. We enjoyed all the episodes, from start to finish. Period drama from mid-19th century England, at the dawning of the Industrial Age, which for the backwater village of Cranford, is a little late in arriving in the form of a railway passing close to the village. Close, but prevented from connecting by the imperious widow landowner to whom everyone in the village kowtows. Nobody in Cranford likes change, anyhow, and self-absorption is the prime avocation there.

A large cast of characters, life begun, life ended, romances, real and imagined flow in interlocking streams through the six hours of broadcast. It makes me long for reading Victorian novels. This series is based on a book by Elizabeth Gaskell, a writer I have not encountered, but it made me think a lot about Dickens.

The last episode neatly ties up all the loose plot lines, complete with re-appearing long-lost relatives and lovers, a timely death and generous bequest, and True Love triumphing over gossip. What more could you want? Hallmark Hall of Fame aspires to this sort of thing but never seems to bring it off with comparable style.

Fortunately, PBS recycles this sort of production often, so I can revisit. Huzzah!

Free Broadcasting Is Not Free

In 1952 or 1953, my family received an RCA television, radio, record player combination in a tasteful wooden cabinet. What would have been called later a Home Entertainment Center. TV became a fixture in our lives. For the first few years before local stations started up, we squinted at snowy signals from Atlanta, of a quality which would not be acceptable nowadays. Would that the quality of programming had kept pace with technological advances so rapidly occurring over the past fifty years.