Rather than listen, the news media has opted to imitate one of it’s greatest critics and fallen even deeper down the hole.
In 2009, not long after the death of long time CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, Time magazine conducted a poll asking Americans who the new ‘most trusted’ in american news was. The answer was Jon Stewart.
From 1999 to 2015, Jon Stewart was the host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central. A platform from which he not only made light of the absurdities of the political and media landscape, but delivered blistering and deeply authentic take-downs of it’s many failures.
In many ways he not only made the show, but changed late night talk shows forever. The New York Times described him as being “animated not by partisanship but by a deep mistrust of all ideology. A sane voice in a noisy red-blue echo chamber”. Mr Stewart, they said, “displays an impatience with the platitudes of both the right and the left and a disdain for commentators who, as he made clear in a famous 2004 appearance on CNN’s ‘Crossfire,’ parrot party-line talking points and engage in knee-jerk shouting matches.”
The appearance they refer to was made particularly famous by the fact that the show was cancelled the very next day. In it, Jon pleaded with hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson to “stop” the “theatrics”, going on to say “I’m here to confront you, because we need help from the media and they’re hurting us”. When challenged by the host on his own lighter approach to interviewing public figures such as then Presidential Hopeful John Kerry, Jon responded “I didn’t realize that — and maybe this explains a lot — the new organizations look to comedy central for their cues on integrity” reminding them “It’s a comedy show”.
This wasn’t Jon’s only clash with the failure of the news media. He was a regular adversary of Chris Mathews on MSNBC, Mad Money’s Jim Cramer and in particular Bill O’Reilly of former Fox News fame. He leaned left, but his greatest criticisms were not partisan. They were institutional. The media was failing in its obligations to the public and it was doing so across the board.
“The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems and illuminate problems heretofore unseen, or it can use its magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous-flaming-ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.” — Jon Stewart
Perhaps just as much as his words, it was an emotional authenticity that earned him the title of ‘most trusted’ newsman in America. Watching The Daily Show felt good, even if it made you sad. It was like listening to a friend, who genuinely cared, describe things in a way you couldn’t. There was catharsis and relief, which Stewart himself readily acknowledged was part of its purpose. It was and is after all “a comedy show”.
The legacy of Stewart’s presence on the scene is obvious. In addition to inspiring a notable politicization across the spectrum of late night programming, numerous former correspondents have gone on to have successful shows in their own right. From Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal and Hassan Minhaj’s The Patriot Act to the multi Emmy award winning Last Week Tonight hosted by John Oliver and The Colbert Report from long time Stewart pal Stephen Colbert, who went on to replace David Letterman on The Late Show. This is of course not to forget Stewart’s successor on The Daily Show, Trevor Noah, who has, in the course of his term, made it entirely his own.
But the legacy doesn’t stop there. And although Jon might feel a touch of pride knowing that his work laid the foundations for the careers of so many talented comedians. It is no doubt deeply unsettling to see the ‘serious’ media take more than a few pages out of the same book.
Because despite spending more than a decade telling the media, to its face, that it needs to “please stop” and act like grownups, it would seem they’ve taken it to mean “do as I do, not as I say”. Clearly somewhat envious of the trust and ratings The Daily Show accumulated in Jon Stewart’s tenure — indicative of a clear demand for authenticity in the public sphere — the news media has attempted to emulate one of it’s fiercest critics rather than listen to him, doubling down on the emotion, the outrage and the “partisan hackery”.
Nowhere is this more obvious than the man at the center of the now famous “evisceration” on CNN’s crossfire, Tucker Carlson, who these days spends his time trying to channel a mirror universe Stewart on Fox News.
Authenticity as it turns out, is hard to replicate.
Yet he’s not alone. Authentic or not, that emotional appeal has proven to be an effective model that draws people by the millions. And so the charade continues. Every major network. Every major news outlet. They have all become poor imitations of a show originally designed to make fun of them.
The media has quite literally become a parody of itself.
Back in 2004, long before the term entered the zeitgeist as a pejorative, The Daily Show was describing itself as “the most trusted name in Fake News”. It was, at the time, a bit of amusing self-deprecation. Now, as the term is thrown about with little regard by shamelessly hollow talking heads and aggressively incompetent con men in a dire race to the bottom, “most trusted name in Fake News” seems to have become less of a joke and more of a marketing strategy.
Those in the news media know that trust is a commodity. They know that Jon had it. They know that they want it. And lacking any better ideas, such as effectively doing their job, they’ve opted to mimic a comedian.
In the words of the man himself…“Please. Stop”.