This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to bang my head against a wall -- the kind of stuff that told me there was a need for something like Geek Philosophy. Star-Telegram.com (of Dallas-Fort Worth) has a new piece up about Jon Stewart that seems to go out of its way to misunderstand its own conclusions about Stewart’s influence and importance in today’s culture. It starts out something like this:
American culture, it seems, can’t decide whether to classify Stewart as a comedian or a journalist.Stewart’s late-night newscast parody, The Daily Show, airs four nights a week in a time slot that makes it an alternative to local newscasts. Big-name media figures like Ted Koppel and Bill Moyers have indicated they respect his opinions and take him seriously.
And surveys show that an astonishing number of young people claim they get most of their news from watching The Daily Show.
The implication being, of course, that Yaaaahh! The sky is falling! Young people are morons! We’re all doomed and it’s Jon Stewart’s fault! Where did we go wrong with our children?
Oh, and the article is accompanied by a really unflattering caricature of the really quite cute Stewart:
The fretting going on over Stewart and The Daily Show is astonishing:
Should we laugh at him? Or should we take him seriously? Both. Because Jon Stewart’s approach to the day’s headlines — too funny to be serious, too serious to be ignored — just might be where real TV news is headed.
Again, it’s: Noooooooo! End of the world as we know!
But it’s not as if the author of this piece, Alyson Ward, doesn’t have all the facts -- she’s knows what the real deal is:
“I mean, you’ve got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night . . . .” [Fox News windbag Bill O’Reilly] told Stewart, apparently a little irritated by the slight [of John Kerry skipping O’Reilly’s show in favor of Stewart’s]. “Eighty-seven percent are intoxicated when they watch it.”(It was later pointed out that, according to Nielsen Media Research, Daily Show viewers are better educated than O’Reilly’s audience — more likely to have completed four years of college.)
Yeah, that’s the way you present a fair look at what you’re covering: you put info that should be closer to your lede in a parenthetical.
But wait, it gets so much better:
The Lilliputian Stewart doesn’t look like he has the strength to turn the news industry on its ear.
What the fuck? Stewart’s height has something to do with this? Why not just call him the runt of the playground and hold him down while the big kids beat him up?
Fortunately, the big kids refuse to comply, and -- throughout the article -- continually point out that Stewart is way more than a featherweight and is plenty reason for the big kids to be scared.
More:
The confusion over Stewart — is he a comedian? is he a journalist? — is a symptom of this sea change in the news business, [Darrell West, a political science professor at Brown University who studies politics and the media] says. “The line between news and entertainment has blurred over the last decade,” he says. “You have a lot of people getting public affairs information from those late-night shows and Jon Stewart. And this is especially the case for young people — for some of those people, it’s their only news.”No lie. A couple of years ago, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press surveyed Americans about how they get their political news. And get this: Twenty-one percent of young people (ages 18-29) said they regularly get their news from comedy shows such as Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show. (And 23 percent said they regularly read a newspaper.)
But here’s the real lede of this story, buried way the fuck at the bottom of the long piece -- in other words, where few casual readers are going to get:
The Annenberg Public Policy Center conducted a national survey just before the 2004 election; about 19,000 adults were asked six questions about the presidential campaign. Frankly, no one did very well: Overall, people got about 45 percent of the answers right. But those who said they’re Jon Stewart fans did much better than average, getting 60 percent of the answers correct. In fact, Daily Show viewers got higher scores on average than people who said they regularly watch national news and those who said they read newspapers.
That’s the story, right there: Traditional “journalism” is not doing its job, and so Jon Stewart and The Daily Show are doing it for them. But Alyson Warde and Star-Telegram.com simply cannot assimilate this obvious fact, it’s so far removed from what we all “know” is “true”:
And last year, while CBS searched for an evening news anchor to replace Dan Rather, there was speculation — seriously — that Stewart might be given a role on the nightly newscast.
Right: “seriously.” Because Stewart is just a funnyman standup comedian telling jokes about how there’s not enough room on airplanes and what’s with the tiny bag of peanuts anyway? I mean, what an insane idea, hiring Jon Stewart to convey the news? Kooky!
When The Associated Press asked CBS chief Les Moonves about Stewart, he wouldn’t rule out the possibility, pointing out that the network was trying to reinvent the news, “making it younger and more relevant, something that younger people can relate to. . . .”It’s not a crazy idea, West says: “Some young people trust Jon Stewart more than they do their nightly anchors.”
And this is where my headbanging progresses to the point of giving myself a concussion. Stewart is not about drawing the kids in to watch the serious grownup news! He is not about being hip... unless “hip” means “intelligent and informed and unwilling to tolerate bullshit and hypocrisy.” If Les Moonves wants to reinvent the news, wants to take a cue from Stewart, how about making the news more about, you know, the news?
9 Comments
Leave a comment