Russert and Huffington Battle Continues, in Letters to E&P

By: E&P Staff In an interview in this week's New York Times Magazine, "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert was asked if he read the popular Huffington Post online, which carries a regular critique of the NBC program. Russert replied, "I don't. There are so many untruths, it is scary. You know, there's a long history there." He went on to charge that he had "the unique honor of having been criticized" by Arianna Huffington "from the right and the left. When she was a hard-line conservative, she criticized me, and now she is a hard-line liberal, and she criticizes me."

Asked by E&P for a reply, Huffington said, in a story that we posted on Friday, "This is the same talking point Russert used in a USA Today story about me earlier this week. His bogus claim is as wrong now as it was then. My critique of his work started when I launched Russert Watch in May of 2005 -- not in the long ago days of my Republican interregnum.

"What are the dates, venues, and words I used when I 'criticized' him all those years ago? If they don't exist (and they don't) will he offer a retraction? Or is it okay for the Washington Bureau chief of NBC News to just make things up out of whole cloth?"

This has now produced a letter to E&P from Russert:

"Once again Ms. Huffington misleads. Read her column from the Washington Times from May 9, 1995. This is when she was part of the Republican Revolution and an acolyte for Newt Gingrich. She actually accuses me of linking the 'Contract With America' to the rubble of Oklahoma City: and goes on to say 'we need to attack, if necessary, in immoderate language. ...'

"Why? Because I began Meet the Press by asking, 'Why would someone become so angry with the federal government they would resort to blowing up innocent Americans, particularly children?' Only a rabid ideologue could draw such a conclusion.

"Ms. Huffington now has her date, venue and words. Will she now apologize to you and your readers for her misstatement or at least for her faulty memory?"

The Washington Times article, attached by Russert, runs 15 paragraphs and includes these two grafs written by Huffington about Russert: "And Tim Russert earnestly inquired: 'Why would someone become so angry with the federal government they would resort to blowing up innocent Americans, particularly children?'

"Behind this innocuous-sounding question, with which Mr. Russert opened Meet the Press the Sunday after the bombing, lay a continuum of accountability that runs from Freidrich Hayek to Timothy McVeigh, from the Contract With America to the rubble of Oklahoma City. It is a continuum which does not exist and which we need to attack, if necessary, in immoderate language whenever it is assumed or implied by reasonable-sounding commentators."

Asked to respond to Russert's letter, Huffington replied to E&P on Sunday:

"I find Tim Russert?s response humorous. He told the New York Times magazine that there is a 'long history' of my criticizing him, and as proof of this long history provides to Editor & Publisher a solitary reference to him as one of a number of journalists in a 1995 column I did critiquing the media for linking criticism of big government with the Oklahoma City bombing.

"The inclusion of Mr. Russert as one of many media figures in a lone column eleven years ago surely does not 'a long history' nor a personal vendetta make.

"Mr. Russert still owes us, as I've already asked for, the dates, venues and words that I have used in what he insists on regarding as a sustained through-the-years attack on him. And while he's looking for those dates and venues, maybe he can also look for the 'untruths' he claims HuffPost's Russert Watch is full of. Which, of course, he also claims he doesn't read.

"Russert Watch isn?t personal. See for yourself:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russertwatch/ ..."