The American Journalism Review has done a lengthy article about why shows like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” are succeeeding during a time when more mainstream sources are faltering in the ratings. The whole article, which actually focuses on Jon Stewart, is worth the read.
What the Mainstream Media Can Learn from Jon Stewart
By Rachel Smolkin
Rachel Smolkin (rsmolkin@ajr.umd.edu) is AJR’s managing editor.…
His [Jon Stewart's] 2004 textbook satire, “America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction,” devotes a section to media in the throes of transformation and punctures this transition far more concisely, and probably more memorably, than the millions of words AJR has devoted to the subject:
“Newspapers abound, and though they have endured decades of decline in readership and influence, they can still form impressive piles if no one takes them out to the trash… Television continues to thrive. One fifteen-minute nightly newscast, barely visible through the smoky haze of its cigarette company benefactor, has evolved into a multi-channel, twenty-four hour a day infotastic clusterf@#k of factish-like material. The 1990s brought the advent of a dynamic new medium for news, the Internet, a magnificent new technology combining the credibility of anonymous hearsay with the excitement of typing.”
Phil Rosenthal, the Chicago Tribune’s media columnist, thinks part of the reason “The Daily Show” and its spinoff, “The Colbert Report,” resonate is that they parody not only news but also how journalists get news. “It’s actually kind of a surefire way to appeal to people because if the news itself isn’t entertaining, then the way it’s covered, the breathless conventions of TV news, are always bankable,” Rosenthal says. “You can always find something amusing there.”
He adds that “so much of the news these days involves managing the news, so a show like Stewart’s that takes the larger view of not just what’s going on, but how it’s being manipulated, is really effective. I think there’s a general skepticism about the process that this plays into… The wink isn’t so much we know what’s really going on. The wink is also we know you know what we’re doing here. It’s down to the way the correspondents stand [in front of] the green screen, offering commentary and intoning even when their commentary may not be important.”
That article misses a major point, which is that today’s journalists aren’t “balanced” at all, they’re right-wing, favoring the Bush administration by not calling it on its lies.
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