Edutainment: Stewart's Feud with Hannity

Ted Koppel and Howard Dean, among others, have pointed out that the Daily Show is a platform where young people get their news.  Host Jon Stewart skewers recent headlines, engages in witty banter with guests, and provokes regular public feuds with Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, the respective hosts of the number one and two rated cable news shows on television.  On Tuesday, Stewart called out Hannity for mixing together clips from various tea-party protests to make a recent event look better attended than it actually was.  On Wednesday, Hannity admitted the deception and apologized.

According to a September 2009 report by the Pew Research Center, 72% of Republican viewers rate Fox News coverage as favorable, with only 43% of Democratic viewers and 55% of all viewers feeling the same way.  Fox News also had a 25% unfavorable rating, the highest among cable news networks.  This 25% roughly corresponds to the young, liberal demographic that shares Jon Stewart's views.  As the Pew Research Center concludes from the study, "partisan differences in views of Fox News have increased substantially since 2007." 

Ever since the 2004 Crossfire incident, I have generally agreed with critics of Stewart that he engages in the same tactics as regular Cable News elements, but hides behind the fact that he is a comedian.  When Stewart appeared on Crossfire in 2004, he accused Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala of being partisan hacks that were hurting America.  When Carlson pressed him on his generous interview of John Kerry before the 2004 election, Stewart replied, "You're on CNN! The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls! What is wrong with you?" 

I felt Stewart's response to Carlson was funny, but mean, like a clever bully humiliating a nerd in front of his classmates. Tucker Carlson got it right: Stewart should be subject to the same standards as "real" journalists.  Although Stewart and producers have denied that the Daily Show has ever tried to be anything other than a parody for entertainment purposes, Stewart himself has been nominated three times and won one Television Critics Association Award for Outstanding Acheivement in News and Information, a clear award for journalism, as well as two Peabody Awards for election coverage.  There is no doubt that, whatever his intentions may be, Stewart is seen in the same light as regular cable news personalities.  One could say that Stewart's coverage forms a counter-balance to the biased coverage of Fox News, or even that Stewart serves as a watchdog of sorts, but his show has the same polarizing effect on America that he himself criticized in Crossfire.  Nevertheless, this recent event with Sean Hannity, mundane though it may have been, led to an epiphany of sorts: both Stewart and Hannity are indeed selling the same product.  Only Stewart admits that that product is entertainment. 

Comments

[Josh]

I didn't think it was mean at all. The problem with the 24 news cycle is that it requires stories to get ratings, and when it doesn't have good stories, it inflates and spins non-stories. tucker carlson and paul begala are two of the biggest political hacks on earth, and they got what was coming to them. I disagree with the idea that Jon Stewart is like them, only hiding behind comedy. in that same interaction, tucker carlson asks which candidate would provide the best material. stewart answers:

"I don't really know. That's kind of not how we look at it. We look at, the absurdity of the system provides us the most material. And that is best served by sort of the theater of it all, you know, which, by the way, thank you both, because it's been helpful."

jon stewart hasn't changed his formula. he has always excelled at pointing out the absurdity of it all. in the age of 24 hour media cycles, it is the nature of the news that has changed. now, everyone else is so shrill and over the top, that jon stewart seems like the only one that is telling the truth.

[Edutainment]

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