AJR: What the Mainstream Media Can Learn From Jon Stewart

Inspired to post this in part by the discussion (on Anything Goes) of Stewart's post-9/11 commentary:

What the Mainstream Media Can Learn From Jon Stewart

No, not to be funny and snarky, but to be bold and to do a better job of cutting through the fog

By Rachel Smolkin
Rachel Smolkin (rsmolkin@ajr.umd.edu) is AJR's managing editor.

When Hub Brown's students first told him they loved "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and sometimes even relied on it for news, he was, as any responsible journalism professor would be, appalled.

Now he's a "Daily Show" convert.

"There are days when I watch 'The Daily Show,' and I kind of chuckle. There are days when I laugh out loud. There are days when I stand up and point to the TV and say, 'You're damn right!'" says Brown, chair of the communications department at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and an associate professor of broadcast journalism.

Brown, who had dismissed the faux news show as silly riffing, got hooked during the early days of the war in Iraq, when he felt most of the mainstream media were swallowing the administration's spin rather than challenging it. Not "The Daily Show," which had no qualms about second-guessing the nation's leaders. "The stock-in-trade of 'The Daily Show' is hypocrisy, exposing hypocrisy. And nobody else has the guts to do it," Brown says. "They really know how to crystallize an issue on all sides, see the silliness everywhere."

http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4329

 

Consumers don't care about news. That's why Rush Limbaugh has so many listeners. They prefer commentary and monologue and preaching-to-the-choir. Which Stewart does, too.

 

Well, let's see if the show can survive after another, say, 16 months... criticizing a democrat might make Jon's head explode

 

On some level, you've touched on a dynamic that speaks to why blogs are as popular as they are, and to some degree why some papers are sending columnists to games but not running gamers from games.

 

Yeah, I agree. He's gone after more than his share -- Hillary for one, tho she's a target regardless of affiliation.
He goes after stupid people in power who do stupid things. Currently, it just happens to be Republicans.

 

No, but there have been times when Stewart has fawned over some of the democrats who have done his show. The low point was when Kerry did his show before the 2004 election. I watch TDS every night and it was a rare moment where Stewart embarrassed himself. He did it again the day before the election when he essentially told his viewers to vote for Kerry.

I love Jon Stewart and I love TDS, but sometimes he's just a little too blatant about his political leanings...