When you produce a daily blog, you gauge your impact not only by the number of people who read it but, perhaps more importantly, by the number who is moved to write you back. People are busy, so if you hit .333—if a reasonably large contingent emails you back on every third column—you are ecstatic.

So I was plenty happy when our kind readers responded in droves to back-to-back editions. The first dealt with the passing of NBC News’ Tim Russert (Monday’s TN&Vs) and the second to the contortions some will go through to find some supposed pro-life silver lining in the cloud of Barack Obama’s extreme pro-abortion positions.

Of the latter I’ll have more to say tomorrow. But let me just follow up briefly on the death of the most revered man in journalism, Tim Russert.

Any of us would love to be celebrated the way his family and friends eulogized Russert yesterday. He was by all accounts not only the best in the business, but also a devoted husband, father, and son.

I mentioned in the earlier column that I did not know his position on our issues. More important was that, as a reporter, Russert didn’t crimp the cards to give pro-abortionists an unfair advantage. In a profession filled with Keith Olbermanns and Katie Courics, being even-handed is a big, big deal.

Former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg, the author of a couple of best sellers detailing the overwhelmingly liberal and pro-abortion bias of the mainstream media, amplified on what I touched on in a column that appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal. The headline said it all: ”Russert Took Media Bias Seriously.” [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121375187453382965.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries]

I really do want you to read Goldberg’s piece and what’s found at a second link to an interview Goldberg conducted with Russert, so let me make just two points.

First, and foremost, how does it forward the quality of the journalistic product if “diversity” means your recruits all think the same way as the staff you already have in place? As a guy from a working class background, Russert’s antenna was keenly attuned to what he called “a potential cultural bias.” He told Goldberg, “And I think it's very real and very important to recognize and deal with. Because of background and training you come to issues with a preconceived notion or a preordained view on subjects like abortion, gun control, campaign finance. I think many journalists growing up in the sixties and the seventies have to be very careful about attitudes toward government, attitudes toward the military, attitudes toward authority. It doesn't mean there's a rightness or a wrongness.

It means you have to constantly check yourself. John Chancellor used to say, if your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

Goldberg noted that when his 2001 book “Bias” was published, the only exception to the media blackout was Russert. “He had me on his CNBC interview show, and we talked about bias for a full hour,” Goldberg writes. “He had me on his show two other times.”

Second, both Goldberg and Russert understood the irony of a profession that prides itself on fearlessly criticizing “power,” yet brooks no criticism of itself—that is invincibly self-righteous.

We learn from Russert’s interview with Goldberg [which you can read at http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2008/06/18/goldberg-russert-recognized-liberal-media-bias-russert-interview] that Russert passed Goldberg’s famous 1996 op-ed charging liberal bias around the NBC newsroom in Washington. The point Russert made to Goldberg was that if his news department was accused of traditionally-defined bias, “We’d sit up and say, ‘Let’s talk about it; let’s tackle it. Well, if there's a liberal bias or a cultural bias, we have to sit up and tackle it and discuss it.

We have got to be open to these things.” No better example of “cultural” or “liberal” bias exists than the hostility to the pro-life cause.

Words are cheap, I understand. But throughout his distinguished career in journalism, Russert not only talked the talk, but walked the walk.

Many people have said, “We shall not see his like again.” I hope that they are wrong but fear that they are right. Russert will be greatly missed.

Please send your thoughts and comments to Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.