Fish In Blue Water
Irradiated by LabRat
A short but mildly interesting article at the Daily Caller about Jon Stewart going on Fox News and explaining what he thinks is the difference between Fox’s agenda-driven reporting and the other networks, as well as what he thinks makes Fox worse than the others. Here’s the meat of it:
I think there is, probably a liberal bias that exists within the media because of the medium in which it exists,” Stewart said. “I think that the majority of people working in it probably hold liberal viewpoints, but I don’t think they are as relentlessly activist as the conservative movement that has risen up over the last 40 years and that movement has decided that they have been victims of a witch hunt. And to some extent they’re right. People on the right are called racists and they’re called things with an ease that I am uncomfortable with and homophobic and all those other things. I think that that is absolutely something that they have a real right to be angry about and to feel that they have been vilified for those things. And I’ve been guilty of some of those things myself.
I don’t dislike Stewart. I do get irritated with his comedy-on comedy-off schtick when he wants to comment on or participate in serious political dialogue and criticism, then hide behind his status as a comedian when he takes the level of heat commensurate for it, but I also think he’s a fairly honest and self-aware man who just happens to have a very different point of view than I do. I also think he’s not exactly wrong here, though that same status as a liberal fish in a liberal pond blinds him a bit to the degree to which what he’s describing shows to people who don’t live in the same pond.
The point I think he’s missed, however, in criticizing Fox news’s brand of agenda-driven reporting as uniquely special and bad above the other major outlets (though credit to him for calling MSNBC on how bad they’ve gotten, earlier in the article), is that conservative outlets tend to be more visibly activist than liberal media outlets because majorities don’t need to be activist. They ARE the majority: their viewpoint is accepted as the default because it IS the default in that setting. Stewart manages to touch around this in acknowledging that almost everybody in the mainstream media comes from a liberal viewpoint and set of values. He thinks the fact that they’re not as actively bent on pressing their values and goals demonstrates that they aren’t agenda-driven; I would argue it goes without saying that this is true- and he agrees it is- they don’t need to let agenda be their driver because their viewpoint, and all the assumptions they make and questions they think to ask or never would, does the driving in mainstream media already.
It’s not a conspiracy, deliberate, or really an “agenda” as Stewart is defining it, it’s just what happens when nearly everybody within a world shares a culture and set of assumptions. Most people who go into journalism in the first place come from big cities, and are interested in journalism, because they have a sensibility that at least somewhat resembles and resonates with the people who are doing journalism already- unless they’re attracted to it specifically in order to counter what they see as a hive-mind, in which case they’re activists by default. This group is well to the left on the larger American bell curve, but they’re exactly median within the world they actually live and work in; they are normal and there’s just a whole lot of right-wingers out there ready to lap up what Fox serves.
The problem isn’t that the “liberal media” is doing agenda-driven reporting or lack of reporting, which conservative media must correct, but that their culture has become so uniform that anyone noticeably to the right of Stewart is unusually right-wing within it- and have a choice between conservative activism, life as the pet conservative on someone else’s show, or a new career.
Media bias, or agenda in reporting, isn’t inherently a bad thing. No one is free of bias, and I like it just fine when people put their biases right into their branding. What’s bad is not that liberal-leaning outlets have an agenda, the problem is that they believe so completely that they are just normal- that leaves them without the chance to find out what their biases even are, absent confrontations with genuinely agenda-driven conservatives.
June 20th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
This has been going on for more 40 years!
Pauline Kael’s actual comment about Nixon’s landslide election is the ur-example. Apparently a reporter, or somebody, asked her to comment on Nixon’s election, and she replied that she couldn’t because she didn’t even know anyone who had voted for Nixon.
Nixon got 1/3 of the vote in New York county yet she didn’t know a single person who would admit to voting for him.
Even then the New York media scene was a cloistered echo chamber.
June 20th, 2011 at 9:52 pm
“I do get irritated with his comedy-on comedy-off schtick when he wants to comment on or participate in serious political dialogue and criticism, then hide behind his status as a comedian…”
Nail on the head. Just like many other pusillanimous twits out there, he thinks that a screeching hatefilled screed, can be redeemed by saying “Just kidding”.
There’s a phrase amongst lawyers here in Texas - it’s “throwing a skunk in the jury box” - the jury might be told to disregard it, but the stink doesn’t go away.
June 20th, 2011 at 10:03 pm
He acknowledges that his hateful stuff is hateful, he just argues that his comedian status means no one should take him seriously as a real commentator, although they do anyway.
It’s the part where he’s happy to take the advantage of being taken seriously where it really benefits him, that galls me.
June 20th, 2011 at 11:53 pm
“I do get irritated with his comedy-on comedy-off schtick when he wants to comment on or participate in serious political dialogue and criticism, then hide behind his status as a comedian…”
Funny you post on one of the only things I’ve seen on television in months when I happened to be at my folks’ house Sunday. It’s funny to me, too, that you’ve said in this statement (albeit more more eloquently) exactly what I said to my father when we were watching the interview on tv. I do think Jon S is a clever man, and he’d be a brutal one with which to battle wits, but he certainly seems loathe to enjoy the withering glare of the kind of annihilating scrutiny to which he so casually, so flippantly subjects others.
June 21st, 2011 at 1:14 am
It’s not a conspiracy, deliberate, or really an “agenda” as Stewart is defining it, it’s just what happens when nearly everybody within a world shares a culture and set of assumptions
The term I use is “Commonality of Interests”. This can be found everywhere, Right, Left or Center. Actions often look coordinated and hence the cry of “Conspiracy!”, but it’s just people acting in what they consider their own best interest.
June 21st, 2011 at 3:14 am
I was not going to comment but I stumbled on an article about Jonathan Haidt who has written about differences between liberal and conservative values and in the article he points out how vast majority of social psychologists are liberal, “a statistically impossible lack of diversity”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html?_r=1
I think that lot of the notions about social psychologists in the article are also true about the media.
June 21st, 2011 at 5:18 am
I can’t find a cite for it, and that cite was going to be on the internet anyway, so, double grain of salt, but very recently I saw an article which claimed that when polled, the major media outlets were running 93% to 7% registered Democrat vs: Republican.
Statistically impossible indeed.
June 21st, 2011 at 9:31 am
OTOH, he’s up front and open about saying people shouldn’t take him seriously. If people do anyway, whose fault is it?
I may disagree with a lot of what he says, and sometimes with how he says it or how he responds to criticism, but there are two things that have earned him my respect. 1) He doesn’t limit his attacks to conservatives or liberals, or to Republicans or Democrats - he attacks all sides with equal vigor based on what he believes (or what he believes can be turned to comedy, at least), and 2) he has willingly and on his own initiative (AFAIK), gone on the air to his audience and admitted he was wrong about a viewpoint when he realized it.
Either one by itself would be enough to earn my respect. Both together, plus the fact that he at least appears to truly believe in the core of what he is saying, have solidified it.
June 21st, 2011 at 10:26 am
Good post and good points. Stewart wants his cake and to be able to eat it too… And no he doesn’t take criticism well at all…
June 21st, 2011 at 11:26 am
Jake- I would agree with you if he didn’t then turn around and do stuff like holding Rallies just before the midterm elections. The ostensible purpose of said rally was “moderate discourse”, but given the position he outlined in this article- that conservative discourse is inherently “more activist”- who exactly were we being rallied to vote for?
June 21st, 2011 at 1:33 pm
Oh, dear, those big ol’ meanies at Fox engaged in a little cheapshot editing…
June 21st, 2011 at 2:28 pm
Cheapshot editing? Stewart should thank his lucky stars he wasn’t interviewed by Couric…
June 21st, 2011 at 2:54 pm
If that had been the case, Squid, the interview would have consisted of ten minutes of the pixelated head of Katie Couric bobbing up and down over Stewart’s lap.
June 21st, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Yeah, didn’t Stewart take down CNN’s Crossfire? By getting on the show and then explaining to them why their show sucked?
June 22nd, 2011 at 2:48 am
I am with Jake on this. and with you when you say that he seems to be a pretty decent guy with a very different view point than your own.
I think it admirable that he agreed to an interview with the “enemy”. Lots wouldn’t have. Even though his opinions and mine are in no way similar, I do admire his conviction and willingness to engage in a conversation.
Labrat - just letting you know that I sent you an email..
June 27th, 2011 at 6:27 am
Having never seen much of The Daily Show after Craig Kilborn left, I can’t speak to John Stewart. But I do distinctly remember a clear example of failure to comprehend the bubble one lives in:
Years ago, there was a dis-satisfaction amongst various liberals that their viewpoint wasn’t being represented enough on talk radio. Thus, in a classic example of Astroturfing, Air America was born. A month or so before it started up, there was a panel interview on NPR about it, hosted by Terry ‘Empty Chair’ Gross. There were the usual approving pundits, but there was also a gentleman from HBO’s marketing department. He didn’t add much until prompted somewhat late in the panel for his opinion. The conversation went something like this:
TG: ‘Mr. HBO, what do you think about Air America?’
HBO: ‘Oh, it’ll fail.’ (He really was that blunt.)
TG: ‘Wha - why do you think that?’
HBO: ‘Because the market for liberal radio is already filled.’
TG: ‘But - how - who?’ (She said more along this line, but was becoming increasingly flustered.)
HBO: ‘You are. NPR. And you give it away for free.’ (Gently bemused and incredulous. You could *hear* him shaking his head.)
TG: ‘How can you say that? We’re not liberal!’
HBO: ‘Whatever you say, but it’s still going to fail.’ (I think he actually laughed at her.)