Tim Russert is the Managing Editor and Moderator of Meet the Press and political analyst for NBC Nightly News and the Today Program. He anchors The Tim Russert Show, a weekly interview program on CNBC and is a contributing anchor for MSNBC. Russert also serves as senior vice president and Washington bureau chief of NBC News. In 2004, Russert authored the #1 national bestseller, Big Russ and Me: Father and Son: Lessons of Life. Russert took over the helm of Meet the Press in December 1991. Since then, MTP has become the most watched Sunday morning interview program in America. Russert has interviewed every major figure on the American political scene. Russert joined NBC News in 1984. In April 1985, he supervised the live broadcasts of the Today program from Rome, negotiating an appearance by Pope John Paul II. Among his many awards, his Election 2000 Meet the Press interviews with George W. Bush and Al Gore won the Radio and Television Correspondents' Joan S. Barone Award and the Annenberg Center's Walter Cronkite Award. His March 2000 interview of Senator John McCain shared the Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence in Television Journalism. He has received thirty-three honorary doctorate degrees and has lectured at the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Reagan Presidential Libraries. He is a trustee of the Freedom Forum's Newseum. Born in Buffalo, New York on May 7, 1950, he is a graduate of Canisius High School, John Carroll University and with honors from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Before joining NBC News, Russert was a counselor in the New York Governor's office in Albany in 1983 and 1984 and a special counsel in the United States Senate from 1977 to 1982.
2004 Tim Russert
Tim Russert / NBC News