Jon Stewart and Critique of tv news

I wrote this Op-ed that never got published, but I feel vindicated, because Crossfire was actually ended in early January after something like 15 or 17 years of being on-air. The power of an honest comment?

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If you want to compare your show to a comedy show, you're more than welcome to.
--Jon Stewart to Tucker Carlson, during his appearance on CNN Crossfire

On my last day as a reporting intern at Taipei Times, an English-language newspaper in Taiwan, the lot of us went out for a hearty meal of noodles and TV-reporter bashing.


“All the TV people go in, and get their requisite bit, and then we print people sit down with the person and get the real story,” said one of my co-workers, waving her chopsticks in disapproval.


I learned a lot that night. In Taiwan, it is apparently common practice for TV reporters to shove their microphones in front of politicians’ noses whenever they can, forcing the unwilling interviewee to say something—anything, even if it has nothing to do with the press conference or event at hand. Flustered politicians, when baited with the appropriate question, may make oh-so-juicy, inexplicable statements—comparing their opponents to meat buns, for example—starting media flurries that can last for days.


“I really meant that in a good way,” you might hear one day while watching the evening news at home. The suited legislator on television stands in front of a bush somewhere, as if he were on the way to his car in the parking lot. He looks like he’s trying real hard to damage control now that he finally has a chance to fix things up, but by now it’s more of a salvage mission than a rescue. “That sort of meat bun is a traditional snack, so I meant that he has local flavor. Who wouldn’t want to be called a meat bun? I think they’re… rather tasty.”


This election season in the United States, I didn’t hear anyone compare Dubya to a Texas BBQ spare rib, or Kerry to a pasty Boston clam chowder—at least, not in so many words. But somewhere between August and November, I began to wonder whether mainstream television news—even in America—was inherently ridiculous.


Can you make a medium of spectacle into a medium of depth and meaningful analysis? Or is it an inevitable that media culture recycles half-baked epithets like “flip-flopper” ad nauseum? Must we hear quite so many analyses of Bush’s twitchy little smirk during the first presidential debate, as if he’s in the running for an Emmy and this just might be what loses him the little golden statue?


Make no mistake—we want a quick dose of cattiness with our political news. We want the key words of the day drummed into our minds so that we can all be catty, too. And really, we just want to vote for the guy who looks the best on TV.


Or do we? When Jon Stewart threw down the gauntlet to mainstream television media during his appearance on CNN’s Crossfire, there was a powerful public resonance that made waves across vastly different mediums. Starting the night of Stewart’s confrontation with Tucker Carlson, the Republican half of Crossfire’s dynamic debate duo, blogs overflowed with passionate reactions. According to tech news on CNET.com, clips of Stewart’s appearance became the hottest download on the web overnight. Online video hosting site IFilm reported more than 670,000 downloads by the following Tuesday.


By then, the story was still current, partly due to continuing hype in the online media, and partly due to a Crossfire response on Monday by Robert Novak and James Carville. Daily newspapers, including the Washington Post, posted their own reactions as late as Tuesday. Maybe it did take a Jon Stewart to deliver a “drubbing” to mainstream news, pundits and columnists posited. Maybe it took a comic to put the Crossfire guys off balance and tell them they were doing theater, not debate.


Maybe, just maybe, the viewing public is not beyond help.


Jon Stewart—and The Daily Show, itself—is only funny as long as the world of news and politics remains absurd. As of October 15th, the date of Stewart’s Crossfire appearance, the public still appreciates the reality check.


According to Stewart himself, the most absurd thing about television news is the fact that it takes itself seriously. An industry filled with more “TV people” than journalists shouldn’t be the authority on truth, he said on an October NPR Fresh Air interview. Today’s political and news television programming has become merely a soapbox for politicians to expound their party lines, and for “partisan hacks” to repeat them.


I think back to one press conference I reported on during my internship. After the speeches had been made, I waited for the television reporters—mostly women, as it happened—to chat up the main speaker and discuss what would be the best bit for him to repeat from the speech. They settled on an anecdote that was just hilarious, and when the cameras turned on, he delivered exactly what they wanted. I had the vague impression of being present on a movie set.
Maybe the problem with television news is that it’s on the television. Competing with other entertainments served up daily on the tube, news shows have to dish up tidbits to capture public attention. And if you were on camera, speaking through a lens to millions of viewers across the nation, wouldn’t you try to be larger than life? Tougher? Funnier? Could you resist the urge to ham it up, just a tiny bit?


Stewart never promised to become the savior of a mainstream media and politics. On the contrary, he stresses the fact that he is a comic and a satirist, not a serious newscaster, dancing away from critics who try to hold him accountable for his easygoing political interviews. The Daily Show, itself, is a product of the television industry. The difference is, it doesn’t pretend to
be anything else.


In a democracy, we don’t just need a government watchdog to hold our government accountable. We need a media watchdog. Preferably one that’s okay to laugh at.