Jon Stewart on the mainstream media

Thank you! I watch The Daily Show, well, daily, and always get a laugh and enjoy his take on things. I know he has a liberal bias, but it's his own comedy show on a non-news network ... who cares?

Also, something I've always been impressed by is the way Jon Stewart generally treats his guests, whether he agrees with their stances or not, he does a good job of being, at least, respectful and is thankful they appear on his show. That's a lot more than Bill Maher can say.

And to say Fox News doesn't have a strong right wing bias is just crazy. The network does everything they us not to do in J-School.

 

Ridiculous. MSNBC has swung hard to the right in recent months (amazingly enough, since the takeover by Comcast).

Witness the monotonously frequent "guest appearances" by the lizard Coulter and the professional-Tom Michael Steele, the afternoon programming chock-full of Wall Street pom-pom shakers, and of course the morning show run by Hannity wannabee Scarborough, who it turns out has complete veto power over anybody appearing on anybody's MSNBC show at any time.

It would be pretty much comparable to Fox replacing one of the dolts on "Friends" with Alan Grayson (or Anthony Weiner) and giving him utter veto power over all guests appearing on the network, ever.

MSNBC is yet another corporatist boilerplate spew-fountain with a nearly-transparent sheen of firmly-muzzled token liberals and faux-liberals (hello, Tweety) sprinkled here and there throughout the programming day.

 

The problem is news organizations that (channeling Jim Rome) 'have a take'. They cease to be credible news organizations.

You can argue that CNN has a liberal bent--I don't agree, but you can make the argument. But CNN does not approach the news from a defined and purposeful ideological viewpoint. Their approach is in search of one thing: ratings...and they will do anything they have to for that purpose.

This is the network that hired Erick Erickson. This is the network that launched an abomination called Spitzer/Parker. This is the network that featured shows by Glen Beck and D.L. Hughley. Does that sound like a network that sticks firmly to an ideology, or one wandering around aimlessly like a rudderless ship, searching in vain for ratings?

 

I've seen Janeane Garofalo on Fox News. What's your point?

 

They put her in charge of the morning show and give her 24/7 veto power over all guests on all shows?

 

MSNBC has tried to be lefty, but its corporate masters don't really have their heart in it. I can't find the quote handy, but when Countdown started taking off, Olbermann said something about how the suits (I don't think he used that term) don't care what he says, as long as it gets ratings. (Well, at least that was true for a while.) If MSNBC really wanted to be the liberal alternative, they wouldn't show so many prison shows, for one thing.

Anyway, when I hear talk about how media is biased against conservatives, I think back to a critique my own father gave me once about a story I had written when I was a temp with the AP early in my career, and it reminds me that people who see everything though an ideological lens are going to find bias against them because everyone is not always, obviously 100 percent for them.

In 1992, I was doing the local scene story as George H.W. Bush campaigned on an early fall Sunday in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of Chicago. Basically, just talking to people about what they thought, describing what was going on. The usual stuff. My father thought my story was biased because I included the following two items:

-- That many in the crowd had radios and headphones so they could listen to the Bears game.
-- And that a very prominent, longtime Democratic pol (Roman Pucinski) was there, helping his daughter campaign for a local seat, and slagging Bush while he did it. (Note: that daughter, Aurelia, later became a Republican.)

What was I supposed to do, pretend that stuff didn't happen? According to my father, apparently, yes.

 

Or not:

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/136512/politifact-to-jon-stewart-not-true-that-fox-news-viewers-are-least-informed/

Here's a better link:

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/20/jon-stewart/jon-stewart-says-those-who-watch-fox-news-are-most/

 

The Daily Show is great, but if he had followed through on explaining how his job is "harder" than journalism, I would find it hard to watch him again.

 

Where did you get that crap? Link to the story about this, please.

 

That Politifact link had no business rating Stewart's comment as true, false or anything in between. It was a whole lot of "well Stewart is looking at it this way but we look at it this way," and even they question their own findings at various parts. Stewart is well within boundaries to reach the conclusion he did.

PolitiFact also gives very short shrift to the study of perceptions of the Iraq War in 2003. In that study, respondents were asked if they believed there was a link between Iraq and al Qaeda; if WMDs have been found in Iraq; and if world public opinion favored the U.S. invasion. Eighty percent of Fox News viewers incorrectly answered yes to one of those three questions, to only 55 percent of CNN viewers.

I can already hear Carlton typing "That was eight years ago!" But it was a seminal moment in shedding light on the way Fox influences opinion, and I don't think we have seen any more respect for the truth since then. Of late, a poll commissioned by Fox News found that 67 percent of American voters believe Obama was born in the United States. Among Republicans it's 47 percent, and among Tea Party voters it's 44 percent. No, Fox News didn't break it out by viewers of each particular network, lest it make itself or its viewers look stupid.

The beat goes on and on.

 

Lemme find it. I remember reading about it the day after it happened last fall. I'll try to get it.