At the New York Times’ Room for Debate, the question posed was whether Jon Stewart had a serious lesson for journalists. Hey, it could have been about Cecil the lion, so wipe that smirk off your face.
As Jon Stewart steps down as host of “The Daily Show” he leaves behind “an audience that will no longer take the theater of media-driven politics seriously,” as Timothy Egan wrote. His funny, but tough take on events was a major source of news for young people, particularly liberal ones.
The original Jon Stewart, before he was replaced with the vaudeville version who mostly mugged for the camera and played innuendo when he couldn’t come up with an actual thoughtful point, was quite brilliant in two things: He used humor to make news interesting, which meant that a generation too lazy to learn what was happening in the world for themselves would get at least a smattering of information. This was no small feat.
But his second trick, discussed in Dannegal Young’s essay in response, is the one that mattered most:
Stewart trusts that his audience already sees politics and news as performance. Rather than blandly accepting what politicians and pundits fed to the media, as many news and commentary outlets do, Stewart demonstrated critical thinking, and empowered his audience deconstruct the pretense of politics and media.
And while questions raised by the show may go unanswered, at least viewers are not left with an artificial certainty imposed by production routines and reinforced by commercial breaks.
We are spoon fed information by journalists. Unless we plan to go out on the road, investigate every story ourselves, contact the participants, interview them, we are left to swallow what the media feeds us. It’s gruel seasoned for the masses. It’s pleasant tasting, goes down easy, and sufficiently satisfying for most people.
Stewart’s schtick was to ask that next question, whenever the media ended the story with an inane assertion, a platitude, a string of meaningless words that failed to provide an answer but gave the impression that it would all, somehow, work out.
Stewart called bullshit. Many took issue with where he went from there, given that he had his own political views to fill the gap. Sure, he challenged the home team as well as the visitors on occasion, but that was only when the home team wasn’t sufficiently home-y for his tastes. You may have hated (or loved, or somewhere in between) his politics, but at least he did something that real media failed to do. He didn’t let it end with bullshit.
This has been a discussion that I’ve had with a number of journalists, usually friends over drinks, where I ask why they asked a question, got a non-answer answer, and let it go. The responses generally fall into a few categories:
- If they challenge an interviewee too hard, they will never come back for another interview. If nothing else, the media needs warm bodies to put on air, and if the warm bodies refuse to show, they are dead air. They can’t have that.
- They have a list of questions they need to get through, and if they spend all the time (remember, time is the most precious commodity on air) following up on their stupid answer to question one, they will never get to the others.
- They aren’t going to get an answer anyway, so why bother beating a dead horse.
This, in turn, has created an incentive system on the part of people in power and office to carefully chart out stupid answers to important question, secure in the knowledge that if they string together words and phrases that create a vague sense of comfort but have no actual meaning whatsoever, no one will point that out.
As for the public, the nice folks watching the telly to learn the important news of the day and the issues that affect their lives, they have come to survive on a steady diet of such news, and have come to accept meaningless vagaries as if they actually meant something. Indeed, stories are done on what some very important politician said, when what he said was nothing. If it’s worth going meta, how bad can it be.
Terribly bad, as we learned from Stewart. Who didn’t love his shtick where he juxtaposed pundits saying one thing one day, the exact opposite another, both with the total sincerity of a person deeply committed to truth? And then there was the one where he would show a statement, a string of words that meant absolutely nothing, and do that eyebrow raised, mouth agape, mug?
So did Stewart’s homage to skepticism change our way of looking at the media, at the people of power in our world blowing nonsense up our butts? Sadly, no. Ironically, his core audience, people deeply committed to his flavor of social justice, have become the most hypocritical, irrational in generations.
The fault isn’t necessarily that Stewart didn’t try to teach us to be skeptical about the malarkey the media and the powerful sought to feed us, but that too many failed to accept the gift, instead taking away only that those who they hated were clowns and those who they agreed with, the ones offering the same level of nonsense, were their truthtellers.
Jon Stewart tried. It’s not his fault that too many people failed to pay attention, but that’s who we have become. At least he gave us some laughs.
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In his own weird way, he actually got noticed.. 2011,2012 elections, he was calling ‘bullshit’ a lot.. & people took notice of that.. people other than his followers.. & then the same old song & dance happened, & he kind of fell off the face of the earth, until he made a snide comment or two..
But I’ll give him this much, During the 2012 elections, he got my attention, & I didn’t like him.. but he was calling bullshit when no one else was.. & while Comedy Central isn’t news, it’s got a following.. which got other news agencies at least noticing something & at least going ‘hmm..’..
And it got me wondering just how bad things are.. & I don’t think I’m alone..
You are alone. There is no one else. Totally, completely alone. The rest of us are content.
Schmuk…
Touché.
How’d you get that squiggly thing over the ‘e’ ..
I can never do that.. to the Gov..
https://youtu.be/JN99jshaQbY
My problem with Stewart was that he too easily lapsed into (and led his viewers into) cynicism, not just skepticism. Personally, I don’t like cynicism much… it’s like peeing into the soup pot. It ends up devaluing everything.
I had a lot of problems with Stewart, as well as a lot of good laughs. The line between cynicism and skepticism is fuzzy; it was his show and he got to call them as he saw them. One thing I never forget when I criticize someone who has dwarfed me in prominence is that they dwarfed me in prominence. It keeps me humble.
Stewart was at his best when he exposed the flaws in journalism & as well as the flaws in the pols the journalists covered.
The excuses SHG listed are exemplars of the misconception that news reporters have a “role” in the process and they are somehow being shortchanged. This is stupid. Their role, is to get answers, real answers, by any means necessary.
Jay Rosen discusses this in depth and gives some excellent example, like that from Richard Oppel, when candidates refused to go along:
[Ed. Note: Link deleted per rules.]
If reporters don’t want to push, stop expecting thinking people to read & watch your crap.
The misguided perspective of journalists is a fascinating subject. You should start a blog where you can discuss this and other subjects that fascinate you. This one is mine.
While I typically found Stewart’s show entertaining, in the last few years I find myself thinking that what he has built (and its iterations with Colbert, Oliver, etc.) are actually doing more harm than good. While he always has said that he is not a journalist or newsman, but a satirist, he captured an audience that seemed ready to ask questions and found themselves mollified by the jokes and comparisons he made. This pacification made the news and those who report it laughable, but, since it was in the form of jokes rather than harsh criticism, it was never translated into action.
The prevailing response seems to have become: “Haha, see those politicans and news people? Aren’t they so ridiculous in their obvious hypocrisy? Gosh, I’m glad that I can see through the veil of the news now!”
… instead of a better, more motivating response of: “These are the people that run our country and feed us our information about the world. How messed up is this? We should really change things for the better so this sort of thing doesn’t continue to happen.”
By making people laugh about it, the corruption becomes palatable and entertaining. Our laughter is the sound that muffles the boots trampling upon the Constitution.
That’s an excellent comment, particularly this line:
That really captures a serious problem.
Many blogs–Simple Justice included–allow readers a more complete meal than is spoonfed to us by the television or newspapers. I don’t agree read you because of your personal warmth or political opinions, but because you offer a perspective on legal issues that otherwise, I’d have no access to. Traditional media often provide useful information, but fail at providing meaningful perspective. And attempts at perspective–the half-assed opinion of a newspaper editor or a regular columnist–supply what’s needed. The world is filled with thoughtful experts and specialists who know more than a generalist reporter can ever hope to know. Blogs may not typically reach a mass audience, but they do provide many readers with thoughtful, expert perspective. I come here for your legal perspective. I visit other blogs for perspectives on economics and education. Granted, most people don’t spend as much time trying to understand the news, but there are a significant amount of us.
SJ is not a news-gathering shop, but a commentary shop. It’s my vehicle for thoughts about a story that someone else has written. If it provides perspective, that’s great. If it makes someone think about the facts in a deeper, more skeptical, more thoughtful way, that’s great. But moving beyond the 6 o’clock news or the NY Times to reading a blog takes effort and desire. Frankly, I’m shock anybody does it, no less as many people as do.
I will admit that I never really went for John Stewart, perhaps because I don’t share his politics. But I don’t think his stepping down is the end of that style of satirical journalism. I have become a huge fan of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (who, as someone pointed out above, was a staff writer for John Stewart). John Oliver seems to be equally willing to call BS on everyone and anyone. And his reportage on the issues that I have knowledge of is deep and insightful, which leads me to believe that his reportage on other issues I wot not of is equally well researched. I know that (for example) his report on Civil Asset Forfeiture got cited by the Volokh Conspiracy as one of the best summaries for the lay viewer of this issue. So I don’t think the future is quite as bleak as some seem to believe.
So it’s all confirmation bias with you? You like it because you agree with it. When you didn’t agree, you didn’t like it. Great.
Some of John Oliver’s stuff has been pretty good. Other is not, shallow, factually wrong and pandering. Watch more before you agree to jump blindly off a bridge for him, and just because Eugene liked it isn’t really a reason. Think independently.
I have deeply mixed feelings about Stewart. For example, I wish he would have spent less time hammeeing Fox News fir its shoddy journalism (wow,stop the presses!) and more time hammering the Obama administration for, say, having Americans killed without due process or using programs like HAMP to make things easier for big banks at the expense of average homeowners. I understand the desire for a better news media, but at some point a person in Stewart’s position with a worldwide audience should put up or shut up.
Et tu, Peterman? Can’t see past his politics to the process? He trashed Fox because he’s a liberal. It’s really not a big secret.
But what did he do to the mechanics of discussion, without regard to which team he was on?
The audience member interviewed coming out of the show said, “He’s the Walter Cronkite of our generation.”
Egads.
I’m sticking to Fox and Friends from this point forward
One comedy show is as good as another.
I have watched almost every episode of The Daily Show for years, and I think Stewart skewered his own side far more frequently than credited. He was scathing about drones, Obama’s Treasury Department, failings of Obama’s Vetrans Affairs Department and the Dems in Congress over support for ill vets, fatuous shallow liberals, etc. etc. Sure, he had a left bias, but he was happy to find a target wherever it appeared — including himself. I remember in the 2008 campaign when mainstream news outlets were running “think” pieces along the lines of, Are people afraid to make fun of Obama, I would say to myself, Have you listened to Jon Stewart?
I agree fully, however, that Stewart gave us a gift that most do not understand, or have any interest in accepting — for to do so would require us to think for ourselves, and apply his method to whatever and whomever we listen.