Tim Russert - A Consummate Journalist

By now, you're probably aware that on Friday the journalism world lost a top notch political journalist -- Tim Russert. His untimely death surely came as shocking news to anyone who followed mainstream politics, and more recently, the Democratic and Republican Presidential primaries.

Ten days ago, this entry was posted regarding comments Tim Russert made while appearing on Chris Matthews' show, "Hardball." He discussed how the media could play a big role in shaping the debate for the 2008 general election between Barack Obama and John McCain.

Here's a reposting of his statement:

"But in an interesting way, based on our previous conversation, it's a role I think the media can play, in really trying to keep pushing this back to this big debate on big issues and not get caught up in a lot of this minor skirmishing that goes on and videotape that gets released where we just run wild with it and sit back and say, what happened? Why did we not cover some of these big differences like Iraq, like Iran, like negotiating around the world, like health care?"

Amen to that... fellow journalists, take note.