Umm... because he's a media figure like Conan is a media figure. He's not a news anchor or host of a debate show -- he's a comedian.

The Daily Show is never intended to be taken seriously. Stewart is constantly mentioning on that show how it's fake and shouldn't be taken seriously. To hold TDS to any kind of journalistic standard is silly.

What Stewart wanted to do is engage in a serious discussion in a serious forum, or one that at least considers itself serious. I don't think it's hypocritical for someone to be funny on a comedy show and serious on a discussion show.

His complaint wasn't that they are biased. His complaint was that they act as partisan hacks on the show, regurgitating the political spin and talking points of the respective parties.

Also, The Daily Show is not entirely partisan. While somewhat left-leaning, the show itself takes shots at all political agendas. Also, it pokes fun at the way the media covers the news as much as they poke fun at the news themselves.

So your defense of Tucker Carlson's behaviour on his TV show is that he doesn't act like a partisan hack in his writing? Stewart wasn't attacking Carlson's positions or beliefs, he was attacking the fact, from his point of view, that he acts like a dick on the show and resorts to cheap shots and spin instead of actual debate. It doesn't matter how many well-written articles he has if he still acts like a dick on his show.

BTW, I don't know if Stewarts points were actually valid, since I don't typically watch Crossfire. What I do know is his points weren't what you seemed to have perceived them to be.

Quote:

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In the end, Stewart came off as one of those annoying grad students who doesn't really stand for anything or actually know what he's talking about. To me, he seemed more interested in making himself perceived as "controversial" or "principled", scoring some cheap points and selling a few books. That's true media hypocracy in my book.

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To me, he came off as an earnest viewer who somehow got onto the show and spoke up about what he views as the show's faults. He actually seemed vulnerable, and near the end resigned, as all the points he made seemed lost on the hosts. I don't see what he did that could be seen as someone cynically trying to present themselves as "controversial" or "principled."

i couldn't have said it better myself. in the beginning i think Stewart thought that his opinion as a viewer would be understood by the hosts, even if it wasn't what they wanted to hear. and as an occasional viewer of Crossfire i gotta agree with Stewart's take on the show. its Tucker pandering to the republicans and bashing the left while Begala panders to the Dems and takes cheap shots at Bush. rarely does a valid point arise that hasn't been passed around every media outlet already. constant regurgitation and no real debate or exchange of ideas, something the show is intended to display. often times it ends up just being a screaming match and therefore i can't take too much of the show.

and whoever said Tucker was trying to defend himself and his show....thats a stretch. he wasn't defending anything, only comparing Crossfire with the Daily Show, which is like comparing apples and oranges. Stewart was trying to convey a valid point and all Tucker could say in response was attacking Jon's Daily Show Kerry interview. sure, it wasn't a hard hitting or probing interview...but it wasn't intended to be, thats the job of media outlets like CNN and MSNBC. that was his point and Tucker was too dumb and stubborn to comprehend his point of view.

You have no idea if that's true. Perhaps he discussed with them his intent to be serious before booking the show. We really don't know.

Just because he expressed his presidential preference doesn't automatically mean that he's saying that his show has any relevance. In fact, he's very clear that The Daily Show is satire and that people shouldn't be getting their news there.

It's just you ;)

Here's the thing: Stewart is a satirist. Any satirist worth his or her salt takes the object of their satire very seriously. It's nearly impossible to do good satire without having a deep understanding of the thing you're lampooning (consider Mark Twain for example.) So John Stewart is an intelligent, opinionated man who has a right to make his feelings known on a topic he has a deep understanding of, just as every American does.

There is no hypocrisy because what Stewart did on Crossfire is basically what he does on his Daily Show: call people like Tucker Carlson dicks. The entire premise of the Daily Show is to call out these infotainment shows and expose them for what they are: badly done entertainment masquerading as news. That's all he was saying on Crossfire and the fact that people get so bent out of shape about it, or that they seem to have been broadsided by his position makes the comedy of the moment all the more pronounced. The righteous indignation expressed by those who would vilify Stewart plays right into his hands.

Actually, they (producers) probably invited him on the show specifically to talk about the issue he was trying to bring up. They were even prepared to ask him why he didn't ask Kerry more hard-hitting questions.

It amuses me to no end to hear people call Stewart Partisan...for it clearly illustrates that they have no idea what they are talking about, and it is they that are the ones with partisan blinders. i.e., anyone who dares to question their stance must be a pinko liberal. If you are truly interested in listening to Stewart, spend some time with this visit on Fresh Air. He dislikes both Kerry and Bush immensely, he just happens to hate bush more, and with good reason. If anything he is disgusted most with the state of politics and the media in general today....again with good reason. Just listen to him for a bit, he's got a lot of great things to say.

http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml...ate=09/30/2004

I disagree, Stewart is clearly partisan. He's not a liberal hack, but he obviously supports one side more than the other. I actually think he didn't particularly care one way or the other until the Iraq war, I think that was Stewarts' single issue.

birrman54

I can't believe you guys are falling for Stewart's SHIT!!! :lol:

He came off as a real douchebag and he was trying to fuck over "both sides". :lol:

I agree with him in that the media needs to stop kissing political asses and hold more feet to the fire, but something just rings very PHONEY BALONEY on this guy. He's "Mini-Bill Maher".

Also, many of the same folks here who don't believe the media is biased suddenly agree with this guy. :lol: !!

HAhahahahah!!!

Stewart was SERIOUSLY downplaying his influence on opinions and culture.

The problem is so many dumb ass MTV kids take people like Stewart seriously and they listen to his partisan "satire". The rest of us just think he's just another stand up turned "respectable" shooting off his mouth for a check. :p

You guys have the wrong people in your target hairs. It's the young kids and yuppies who take him seriously and "play into his hands" :lol:

You could not be more wrong if you tried.....listen to the Fresh Air interview....

I agree completly that Stewart is a satirist who uses his fake news show to satire news shows...I also believe that he has every rite to be a huge critic of news shows while the host of a fake partisan news show


THE ONLY THING --- His sole problem is his tremendous ass kissing interview of Kerry, he let his Kerry love get the best of him, and weakens his position somewhat.

I'm about half an hour through the Freshair interview and I prefer it to his appearance on Crossfire. You get a much clearer picture of his problem with the media. I agree with all his points, except I like Meet the Press even though it's a tv news show.

This makes NO sense.

Journalists have a responsibility to not kiss ass. Comedians do not. That's all there is to it.

If I managed to land John Kerry, or GW Bush, or Bill Clinton, you can bet I'd kiss their ass too no matter how much I hated their politics. Like he said, his show is led in by DIRTY PUPPETS. It would be like the Mont--er--WASHINGTON Expos signing Barry Bonds. He may be an asshat, but you would cheer him anyway.

during his NPR interview he talks about how journalists aren't asking the hard questions. They had a clip of him grilling some Bush response team leader about how they get the 'most liberal senator' figure, so clearly he DOES ask serious questions sometimes, but he didn't when Kerry was there. Arguably one of the few times he should have.

birrman54

He does occasionally ask serious questions, but that's not the point. The show is a comedy fake-news show. It has no responsibility to ask hard, serious, questions.

His point is... The real news/media does.

Giant,

Why do you think Jon is a phoney? Is it just because you don't like his political views?

Why isn't anyone bitching about Leno letting Kerry ride a motorcycle into his interview?

TDS is a satire news program that is just one of those late night talk shows mixed into one. To have these guys hold him to those standards of putting the feet to the fire is stupid.

I really don't see why John should be held to the standards of CNN. Shit, look at how FOX NEWS offers such one sidedness to their news "___ days till you can re-elect President Bush".

That is the point and I loved how he mentioned crank yankers as a sign that HIS SHOW IS NOT TO BE TAKEN AS SERIOUS NEWS SOURCE.

I have this on my hard drive and I wont be deleting it anytime soon because it is a keeper.

The day after the Kerry interview, they had RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie on, and John Stewart strongly hinted that he'd be as kiss-ass in an interview with Bush if Bush came on. So it wasn't partisanship, it was dealing with a guest that's way out of their class.

Also, I've heard Stewart describe his interviews as an attempt to draw out a human moment from these personas, to get the interviewees to drop their acts and be real, if only for a second. The Kerry interview seemed like an attempt to do that, to try and get a sense of who John Kerry might be outside of his political persona. If Stewart had asked "hard-hitting" pointed questions, Kerry would've fallen back on his standard talking-point responses, and there would've been no glimpse of anything beyond his put-upon public persona.

There's no question that intelegent, informed people watch the Daily Show. If it was just "dumb ass MTV kids" they wouldn't get the jokes and the show would fail. In order to get the satire you have to know what the target is. You need to be up on current events and the nature of the coverage of them to 'get' the show.

That is exactly the bottom line. He has no responsibility to be objective or not to be objective. He can ask or not ask any question he likes because his show is not journalism. The Daily Show is a comedy as much as Seinfeld, SNL and That 70s Show are. I love how people seem fooled by The Daily Show into thinking that it has some status as an actual news program. Amazing.

The real joke here is that you think John Stewart is part of "the media."

The Daily Show isn't trying to fool anyone though. They actively tout themselves as fake. The ones that seem to take them seriously are the news outlets and people who think that anything that looks like a news show is actually a news show. That latter part also explains how Fox News has any credibility.

So if he's next to last, who is last?

Calling someone partisan strongly suggests that that person supports only one party's positions and agendas. At this particular point in time he's voting for Kerry, but I don't think it's because Bush is Republican and Kerry's a Democrat. Rather, it's more that he seriously thinks Bush is screwing the US up, and given the two viable choices, he went for the other guy.

The problem with our two party system is that you're called partisan if you take any position at all. If your position falls outside the position of one party, you must be partisan to the other party. We have politicians who are called betrayers if they don't toe the party line 100%. We can't have civilized discourse because you're automatically labeled a "bleeding heart liberal" or "nazi conservative" if you disagree with someone's position on something.

The reason why there are so many undecided is not because these people are wishy-washy, it's that people can't be neatly divided into two groups. Take someone who is for universal healthcare, is against the Iraq war, is against the death penalty, yet is pro-life and for the PATRIOT act. What's the choice for that person? I think that Stewart falls into the category that many people fall into, which is people who pick based on which candidate best agrees with the issues they care most about.