By Barbara Cochran, RTNDA President Emeritus

Ted Kennedy was not one of those senators who never met a microphone he didn’t like. Unlike many senators, he was not a frequent visitor to the podium in the Senate Radio-TV Gallery and seldom called a news conference about the topic of the day. He rarely gave on-camera interviews and hardly ever appeared on a talk show.

When it came to public appearances, he preferred to communicate through his oratory. The clips we’ve seen in the days since he died show his great speeches at political conventions and the moving eulogies he delivered at so many family funerals. We’ve seen few excerpts from interviews and in those that have been shown, he looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.
   
Maybe it had something to do with his interview with Roger Mudd of CBS on the eve of the 1980 presidential campaign. His stumbling answer to the question, “Why do you want to be president?” was often cited as one of the reasons he was unable to defeat incumbent President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination.

For most of his time in Washington, he didn’t need to seek the spotlight. It always found him, sometimes in circumstances that were embarrassing or worse. But he seemed to understand that too much publicity could dilute his influence. During my tenure as executive producer of Meet the Press, I tried repeatedly to get him to be a guest on the program, with very limited success.

He saved himself for the big moments. One of those came in early 2008 when he endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, saying the torch was being passed to a new generation, an echo of his brother Jack’s inaugural address.

This is not to say that Kennedy had poor relations with the Washington press corps. On the contrary, he spoke with many reporters and columnists, but he preferred to have a quiet chat, not a noisy news conference. And he often let his superb staff represent his views or give information about the legislation he was pushing.

First and foremost, he and his staff took care of the local media. His ties to Massachusetts could not have been stronger and that meant the Boston Globe and the Boston television stations ranked high on the callback list.

He remembered that journalists are people, too. In the past few days several journalists have told of having received a private call of comfort from the senator when they were facing family illness or other personal problems. In each case, the journalists said the calls were meaningful because they knew he had faced even worse problems himself.

The press’ treatment of Kennedy hasn’t always been kind. Chappaquiddick and the William Kennedy Smith trial brought unflattering scrutiny. But Kennedy seemed to respect the role that journalists need to play. He never made speeches denouncing the media, never had an enemies’ list.

Kennedy was a larger than life figure. As the patriarch of a legendary and tragic family, as a leader in the Senate for 46 years, as a champion of the less fortunate in society, he cannot be replaced. The journalists lucky enough to cover him throughout these years won’t see his like again.