Wash. Post's Kurtz pointed out "liberal bloggers[']" criticism of Russert debate performance, but not Russert's faulty questions

In his November 12 column, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz wrote: "Tim Russert is accustomed to putting politicians on the spot. But after he repeatedly pressed [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] during a presidential debate two weeks ago, the NBC Washington bureau chief was ripped by liberal bloggers who called him everything from a bully to a sexist. Clinton responded during the debate by accusing him of playing 'gotcha,' and her husband [former President Bill Clinton] slammed Russert as well." However, Kurtz did not note that at least two of the questions Russert posed to Clinton included falsehoods.

As Media Matters for America documented, Russert falsely claimed that a 2002 letter written by President Clinton to the National Archives "specifically ask[ed] that any communication between [then-first lady Hillary Clinton] and the president not be made available to the public until 2012" before asking Sen. Clinton, "Would you lift that ban?" In fact, President Clinton's letter did not ask that such communications "not be made available," but rather listed them as documents to be "considered for withholding" [emphasis added]. In a November 2 statement, William J. Clinton Records representative Bruce Lindsey said that rather than prohibiting the release of communications between Bill and Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton had merely designated such communications as part of a "subset" of presidential records "that should be reviewed prior to release."

Further, Russert misrepresented debate exchanges on Social Security to accuse Clinton of having "one public position and one private position" on the issue of raising the cap on income on which Social Security taxes must be paid, as Media Matters also documented.

In his November 5 column, Kurtz similarly wrote that "liberal bloggers" were "sniping at Tim Russert over his debate questions to Hillary," and said on the November 4 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources: "Let's talk about the questioning. I mean, Tim Russert is really getting hit by some of these liberal bloggers. The statistic came out 14 out of the 26 questions that he posed to any candidate went to Hillary Clinton. Is that a bit unbalanced?" In neither instance did Kurtz note Russert's faulty questions.

During the October 30 debate, Russert asked a total of 30 distinct questions (not including follow-up questions). Fourteen were either questions directed to Clinton or questions directed to other candidates about Clinton, as Media Matters has noted.*

From Kurtz's November 12 Post column:

Tim Russert is accustomed to putting politicians on the spot. But after he repeatedly pressed Hillary Clinton during a presidential debate two weeks ago, the NBC Washington bureau chief was ripped by liberal bloggers who called him everything from a bully to a sexist. Clinton responded during the debate by accusing him of playing "gotcha," and her husband slammed Russert as well.

"A question about whether illegal immigrants should have driver's licenses is hardly a gotcha question," says Russert, who also pressed Barack Obama about the issue. "It's the game, politics 2007. Everyone chooses up sides, and because of the Internet, everyone can be a pamphleteer. I think it's healthy for democracy. But in no way, shape or form should it deter us from asking questions.

"Every campaign's job is to spin and push back, and their supporters try to do the same, to create confusion and turn on the fog machine."

"Meet the Press" is celebrating its 60th anniversary this month, the last 16 years with Russert as moderator. The oldest news program on television is something of a throwback in the YouTube age, but Russert has boosted the audience to 3.4 million, from 2.7 million when he took over. The show is rerun twice on MSNBC.

"It's meat and potatoes," Russert says. "You put the guest in the chair, turn on the lights, turn on the cameras and start asking questions."

The top-rated Sunday show generates plenty of headlines. Yesterday, Russert interviewed Obama -- who first opened the door to a White House bid when he appeared on "Meet" late last year -- and pressed him on Social Security, his relationship with an indicted developer and whether the Illinois senator had actually shown leadership on ending the Iraq war. A week earlier, in his first Sunday morning interview as a candidate, Fred Thompson made news by refusing to back a constitutional ban on abortion. Russert confronted the former senator with 1994 statements in which he said he would not ban early-term abortions, but Thompson said his voting record was "100 percent pro-life."

The host says he has commitments from Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney to appear before the Iowa caucuses -- after making clear that he would devote an hour to them regardless of whether they showed up.

Russert, whose 12-year contract runs through 2012, says he gets plenty of suggested questions before a major candidate appears. "It's amazing. Everyone wants to weigh in -- friends, foes, viewers. We've been inundated."

From Kurtz's November 5 Post column:

With liberal bloggers sniping at Tim Russert over his debate questions to Hillary, I've somehow been dragged into the fray -- over a piece I wrote three years ago! The New Republic's Christopher Orr picks up the play by play:

" Daniel Larison makes a few typically sharp (in both senses of the word) observations. Citing Howie Kurtz's compliment that 'Tim Russert, media superstar, hasn't forgotten where he came from,' Larison explains:

" Naturally, the implication in the phrase is that you still feel some attachment or loyalty to the place where you grew up, that you haven't 'sold out' and forgotten your 'roots.' But this entire vocabulary of selling out and the roots of the unrooted has evolved to describe people who very definitely have sold out, or bought in, traded up, or however you would like to describe it, and then moved on.

"It might be worth noting here that Wolf Blitzer is also from Buffalo, as is the Post's (tremendous) cartoonist Tom Toles, and that Kurtz himself graduated from SUNY Buffalo. Perhaps it's time we stopped taking Russert's claims of rustic authenticity at face value and named him for what he is: a member of the post-Buffalo media superelite."

I plead guilty to having gone to that fine state university. In my piece -- which was the setup for a long, Meet the Press-style Q-&-A with Russert -- I wrote:

"The role of backslapping Buffalo Bills fan isn't just a pose for Russert -- a neat bit of imagery to soften the status of his multimillion-dollar salary and mighty network perch -- though he isn't shy about using it to his advantage."

And by the way, the guy is the son of a garbage man who went to Cleveland's John Carroll University -- on a partial scholarship. Do you ever really forget that kind of upbringing, no matter how rich and famous you become?

From the November 4 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, with Kurtz; Roger Simon, chief political columnist for the Politico; Amanda Carpenter, national political reporter for Townhall.com; and Clarence Page, columnist for The Chicago Tribune:

KURTZ: Let's talk about the questioning. I mean, Tim Russert is getting really hit by some of these liberal bloggers. The statistic came out 14 out of the 26 questions that he posed to any candidate went to Hillary Clinton.

Is that a bit unbalanced?

SIMON: She's the front-runner.

KURTZ: Yes.

SIMON: She's supposed to get the questions. She's supposed to get the tough questions. There is a reason she's front-runner.

"Let's explore how good she is." That's a legitimate journalistic tack to take. I think he did an excellent job, especially when most of the telling points are made on the follow-up questions, which is all -- been missing from these debates.

The YouTube debates, for instance, are fascinating, they're great entertainment, but they don't allow for follow-ups. And that's why you need journalists on the stage, at least in part, asking follow-up questions.

KURTZ: But, you know, I could make the argument if Russert is going into his Meet the Press mode and say, "You said this in 1999, and now you said this and you said this last week," shouldn't he do that at least among the leading candidates, as opposed to mostly against one candidate?

PAGE: Well, let's take, for example, Social Security. Very important issue, Howard. And, you know, we know Edwards' and Obama's positions better than we know Hillary Clinton's positions. She's danced around exactly how she's going to deal with keeping Social Security solvent, other than to say, I'll appoint a commission.

Well, hey, you know, get her on the record for that. And that was what happened. And I think the same can be said for the other issues.

You know, issues are important. They do matter. And I thought in this debate you really had a contrast drawn between the candidates.

KURTZ: You know, all right, issues are important. But the biggest single problem that Hillary Clinton created for herself was on the question about driver's licenses for illegal immigrants in New York state, Governor Eliot Spitzer's program, or proposal. But Obama and John Edwards sort of agree with that too. So all of the coverage, it seems to me, was not about was she right or not right on this. It was about, you know, how she performed. Did she fudge? Did she seem to want to have it both ways?

CARPENTER: Well, there might have been a higher expectation for her because this is a federal issue in her home state. And the fact that she couldn't answer that very clearly and forthrightly right away, was an issue. But, you know, she can't say where she really is on this.

I mean, her lead adviser on immigration is on a former president for the National Council of La Raza. That will not play well in a general election. So I think that's where your see Hillary Clinton literally calculating on stage and going through her thoughts. And, you know, then you've got that YouTube clip.

[crosstalk]

PAGE: She might have had a chance if she hadn't held up her hand and jumped back in there again to say, I only halfway meant what I just said?

SIMON: This was a self-inflicted wound. You can make a reasonable case for giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. You can make a reasonable case for not doing so. What you can't do is make both cases --

KURTZ: In the space of two minutes.

SIMON: -- in the space of two minutes.

KURTZ: Right.

SIMON: That's what she did. She did it by herself. She looked what she's not supposed to look like, which is political. And people didn't like it.

KURTZ: And it's not entirely true that Tim Russert didn't ask any other tough questions. He did ask Dennis Kucinich about whether he saw a UFO.

* Media Matters counted only discrete questions asked of each candidate. Media Matters used the MSNBC debate transcript. In one instance, the transcript incorrectly indicated that Russert asked a question that Williams had actually asked. Media Matters did not count that question.