Who Knew?

I want to read your opinions on this. And click through to listen to the 5-minute podcast excerpt - kind of ridiculous. nontv: The topic has been done to death, but listen to the audio below and consider last night’s program, and let’s debate: IS JON STEWART A JOURNALIST? Below this post is an excerpt from the podcast This Week In Media, where content producers and journalists with real credentials in their respective industries seriously compare Stewart to Walter Cronkite. (Listen to the whole thing - it digresses for 30 seconds in the middle but then gets back on-topic.) The comparison makes me very uncomfortable - both Stewart and Colbert have said on numerous occasions they feel no obligation to abide by a journalistic standard - in fact, the only reason they bother to communicate the news at all is in order to set up their jokes. But when Stewart devotes more than 20 minutes of his show and 12 minutes of airtime to a discussion of how to interpret a piece of legislation, the rationale behind that decision is obviously a little more complex than “joke set-up”. So here are the big questions: what do Stewart and The Daily Show’s writers think their role is in the larger political dialogue - the voice of the populist everyman, mere comedians or something more? If the staff of The Daily Show do not perceive themselves as journalists, does that perception even matter when most of their audience treats them as such? And what does it mean when pundits unapologetically assert that today’s “journalists” need to prioritize being funny or entertaining over accurate and incisive if they want to be even listened to? Comment or reblog with your thoughts.
I want to read your opinions on this. And click through to listen to the 5-minute podcast excerpt - kind of ridiculous.

nontv:

The topic has been done to death, but listen to the audio below and consider last night’s program, and let’s debate: IS JON STEWART A JOURNALIST?

Below this post is an excerpt from the podcast This Week In Media, where content producers and journalists with real credentials in their respective industries seriously compare Stewart to Walter Cronkite. (Listen to the whole thing - it digresses for 30 seconds in the middle but then gets back on-topic.)

The comparison makes me very uncomfortable - both Stewart and Colbert have said on numerous occasions they feel no obligation to abide by a journalistic standard - in fact, the only reason they bother to communicate the news at all is in order to set up their jokes. But when Stewart devotes more than 20 minutes of his show and 12 minutes of airtime to a discussion of how to interpret a piece of legislation, the rationale behind that decision is obviously a little more complex than “joke set-up”.

So here are the big questions: what do Stewart and The Daily Show’s writers think their role is in the larger political dialogue - the voice of the populist everyman, mere comedians or something more? If the staff of The Daily Show do not perceive themselves as journalists, does that perception even matter when most of their audience treats them as such? And what does it mean when pundits unapologetically assert that today’s “journalists” need to prioritize being funny or entertaining over accurate and incisive if they want to be even listened to?

Comment or reblog with your thoughts.

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