Tim Russert
Born: May 7, 1950
Died: June 13, 2008
Tim Russert, the longtime moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, was a role model for contemporary Catholics. It was the way he embraced his work as a calling no less serious or less Catholic than one to the priesthood or religious life. In a society where television journalists are hired for their hair color, Russert believed in and embodied journalism’s ideals: the importance of truth-telling and of serious consideration of the issues that affect the least in our society.
Russert even described his work as a vocation. “We have an obligation [to] all those men and women who work hard all week long in real jobs, that when they turn on CNN or turn on NBC or pick up a newspaper or turn on the radio, they realize that someone else is working as hard as they are trying to get to the truth,” he said in a 2006 interview with Larry King. “And it is not an easy job, but you know what, Larry, it is the best one you could ever have. It is a vocation being in journalism.”
More about Tim Russert:
Good newsman
Tim Russert did more than bring us the news. The host of “Meet the Press” also showed us how to take our jobs, our citizenship, and our faith seriously.
Image: hyku from Winter Haven, FL, USA – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
