I don’t recall Daily Show coverage from eight years ago but Stewart started out pretty positive towards McCain. McCain had been a guest several times before (3 times in 2007 alone and 15 times total) and, at the time, he was all about being the “best chum to the media” (not just news media either). As the campaign went on and people noted that McCain was dropping many of his previously moderate/bipartisan stances to adopt more traditional conservative platforms, McCain became increasingly hostile towards the media and I think you saw some of that reflected back at him. Not because he was a Republican but because he was being a dick.
And, really, “I was for it before I was against it” can’t hold a candle to McCain saying “I never considered myself a maverick”.
I was only trying to “counter” the statement that FNC did not want it’s audience to “undergo a moment of reflection”.
I don’t believe what (apparently) Beck believes. Didn’t I make that clear? (See below for a reprint of a comment I made in that post.)
Do you suggest that CNN asks the viewers to reflect on the accuracy of it’s own reportage?
I submit that this is a subjective belief, and that reasonable people can feel differently.
McCain never flip-flopped on the war in Iraq. Kerry did, and the cynical among us can believe he may have done so to be more appealing to his Democratic constituency.
I think that even an “objective” reporter may feel as you do, and thus focus more on McCain than Kerry, and I think that’s one data point in favor of an indication of (subconcious) bias. There are a lot of people who feel that that bias is NOT subconcious.
One was a single vote, the other was a carefully constructed media narrative spanning years, thrown away in a single hysterical statement. Sure, it’s subjective since there’s no objective way of measuring which is funnier but it’s not about “appealing” to anyone, it’s about the sheer lunacy of spending years upon years saying “I’m the Maverick!” and then saying “Wha? I NEVER claimed that!”
The difference is that Stewart and the Daily Show never claimed to be “Fair and Balance.” They proudly label themselves “Fake News”, meaning they have license to play fast and loose with the facts, and be biased in favor of funny. They admit to being biased in favor of comedy, even if it isn’t fair. Fox News claims to “Fair and Balance” and yet clearly isn’t so, being biased in favor of the R’s and against the D’s, and biased in opposition to the “inherently leftist main stream media.” The fact that the MSM ISN’T all inherently leftist doesn’t bother them at all.
That’s a mighty fine distinction to make, though. I’ll agree that most of the bits on the Daily Show go after things that are pretty much “objectively” worthy of ridicule.
But there are other bits that essentially require the viewer to be a liberal to find them funny, where the object of ridicule is only ridiculous because you disagree with them politically. It’s to the Daily Show’s credit that, IMHO, such bits are rare (maybe no more than once a month), but I do think they are there.
The folks who see active bias in Fox News are correct. The folks who believe the entire rest of the media acts with a single mind and a single purpose are wrong.
I don’t see that as a fine distinction at all. It is as simple as “who in the public did something we can make fun of” versus “who on the right did something we can make fun of”. That is a significantly different motivation, not a “fine distinction”.
It’s not the best example (since there are some genuinely funny parts) but there’s this from earlier in the month. I just didn’t find Cantor’s statements to be as inherently and obviously insane as Jon obviously did and found most of the piece to be attacking a straw man.
The distinction is between things that are “objectively” funny and things that are funny because of your own biases. It may be a simple distinction for other people to make, but it’s not as easy when it comes to policing yourself.
Fox must be afraid of him or they wouldn’t have launched this campaign against him, with nearly every Fox personality firing a salvo this past week. If they think Comedy Channel is going to cave to this and get rid of Stewart, they’re insane. The best move he made was to turn it all back on himself earlier this week with the series of his clips showing himself mocking all creeds and colors of politicians. Racist? Are they kidding with that?
And which FOX viewer even watches The Daily Show? This dustup is just pure material-generating win for Jon, if you don’t believe me you can ask Tucker Carlson and Jim Cramer.
Hi. Just stopping by to officially retract my assertion that Stewart should be held to the same standards of Truth telling as “real” journalists. No other point have I conceded yet.
Edit: Yes, I realise this backtrack on my part matters not a whit in any scheme of things, great or small. I’m sure Stewart will sleep just as soundly.
I hate this general trend of general trend of slamming politicians for changing their minds over time. The world changes. However, that’s - objectively - a different issue than McCain insisting that he had never called himself a maverick. Changing one’s mind and rewriting history should be treated differently.
The big issue about comparing FOX to the Daily Show hasn’t been mentioned. It’s the sheer numbers involved. The Daily Show is a half hour a day, four days a week, 40 weeks a year. That’s 80 hours or 1% of a year’s time. Even if you throw in every repeat and double that to include Colbert, CC broadcasts that “liberal” pov no more than 5% of the time. Quantity and repetition counts. Satire is potent but there is no equivalence when one side puts out 20 times as much content as the other. And obviously that number is way too low. TDS makes fun of MSNBC and CNN and the networks and the Democrats and general idiocy in numbers greatly exceeding any time it spends going after Republicans and FOX. There may be 5 to 10 minutes per week of those segments.
It’s an enormous compliment to Jon Stewart that FOX can think his 5-10 minutes a week counterbalances their 24 hours a day. If that’s equivalence, every satirist in history has to bow down to Stewart. But I don’t believe it for a second.
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It’s an enormous compliment to Jon Stewart that FOX can think his 5-10 minutes a week counterbalances their 24 hours a day. If that’s equivalence, every satirist in history has to bow down to Stewart. But I don’t believe it for a second.
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Again, my point (and only MY point) is not who has the smelliest dick at the news desk.
My point was that both sides see the other as biased, and refuse (or recant) to see thier own potential for bias. (“Active” or not.) (Flawed analogy: Like trying to get an addict to admit that there is a problem with themselves.)
In my opinion, until this… stubborness… goes away, I don’t think a meaningfull debate on bias (and what to do about it) will be had, and progress towards eliminating it will be poor.
I am not interested in debating “who started it”, “who’s worse”, etc, in this thread.
I think the country has been polarised (do the politicians deliberately encourage that?), and this is reflected in our TV programming. The problem of bias does not rest with any one network or person, but with all of us.
Of course both sides see the other as biased. Both sides admit to bias so the assertion that neither admits it is not correct.
Chris Wallace admitted that Fox tries to balance the bias in the mainstream media which means they must be biased in the opposite direction. I know that the next day he issued a statement changing that to “full story”.
Jon Stewart did not say he wasn’t biased (liberal views) he just said that it wasn’t the most important influence on his work. He asserted that the conservative bias of Fox - evidenced by their slogan and Wallace’s statement - is their primary influence. Fox tries to side step that by denying the existence of a written internal directive without addressing internal editorial guidance and the prevailing corporate culture.
Jon Stewart gave his opinion that the rest of the mainstream media seems to be biased but not to promote a liberal agenda but to put conflict and sensationalism on the air to get ratings.
Both Fox and the mainstream media are wrong because they seem to think that there are only two sides when there is evidence that there is a significant moderate position also.
