cross posted at BuzzFlash.com

For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.

Oh boy, does Tim Russert fit the BuzzFlash Media Putz description to a “T”: “In recognition for reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and tailored to corporate paymasters rather than serving the citizens of America.”

When you work for NBC, owned by GE, you don’t make a lot of political waves with the status quo in D.C. that gives big fat contracts to your parent corporation. Tim Russert knows if he ever asked a meaningful follow-up question to Dick Cheney or any other “guest” from the dark side, a reprimanding phone call would come from down on high. Those kind of reprimands could dent a fat paycheck, so Tim knows to just offer up a baby-face smile and let the GOP Masters of the Universe lie away.

In a tribute he wrote to his father, Russert writes about his love and admiration for a no-nonsense working class man who raised four children while working two jobs in South Buffalo, NY. But clearly, while “Big Russ” (as Tim titled the book and calls his dad) was an admirable working class hero, “Little Russ” is a toady who left the integrity in Buffalo as he pursued the big bucks.

Russert’s main skill has nothing to do with journalism. It’s his affability ratings when they conduct those strange focus groups where they hook people up to wires that somehow detect if they “like” a television “‘personality.” In short, Tim would never “offend” anyone by pointing out that they are lying. That maybe why Cheney loves to be interviewed by “Little Russ.”

Most recently, BuzzFlash reader Diane Rogers nominated Tim for a lovefest he held on the July 15 “Meet the Press” with Robert Novak and friends. It was just one friendly guffaw after another as the entrenched “pundits” provided a vehicle for promoting Novak’s new book.

Diane wrote in her nomination of Russert:

Tim Russert for hosting a Meet the Press “roundtable” Sunday (7/15) with Robert Novak, Al Hunt, and “political strategists” Mike Murphy (Republican) and Robert Shrum (Democrat), in what looked like a get-together for Novak to promote his book, The Prince of Darkness.

Novak got another chance to say, without rebuttal, that Valerie Plame couldn’t have been covert, and no crime was committed. The “liberal” Hunt, in fact, thinks Bob got a “bum rap” in the Plame case and pronounced the book “fabulous.”

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