Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have the rare position of being able to poke fun at the ever-present absurdity and inconsistencies in the administration and world politics and events at large, because they are on a comedy show. Everyone else in the news media is forced to play it straight; they are the ones who can hold it up the light a little differently and let us all see just how irreverent even the most "serious" of events in life can be sometimes. Many times they don't even have to deliver punch lines. The facts of an event are funny enough when presented on a comedy show rather than on nightly network news with [insert generic news anchor here].
A University of Indiana study due for publication next summer was recently announced with it's summarized findings released, the buzz being that it shows the substance of news on The Daily Show and that of the average nightly network news program are roughly the same.
I don't know if this says more about The Daily Show or network news. It certainly gives Jon Stewart's show some legitimacy against the inane critics like Geraldo who said Stewart and Colbert make a living by "putting on video of old ladies slipping on ice and people laughing.” Of course, anyone who's seen the show knows how ridiculous this sounds, but say it on Fox News and you're bound to get 89% of viewers buying it.
I wrote a couple weeks back about the overall softening of network news, and the eroding of the concept of investigative reportage (outside of John Stossel's hard-hitting, "Fat in America"-type pieces every week on 20/20). It's unfortunate that our news media has to bow to the entertainment divisions of their various media conglomerates. I honestly think people who watch the news will continue to watch if they were to add more substance and less fluff, and people who don't watch the news aren't going to tune in now just because Brian Williams or Katie Couric will occasionally talk about Jennifer Anniston or whoever happens to be celeb du jour. Just report the news, let Mary Hart and Nancy O'Dell worry about who is breaking up with whom in Hollywood and all that drivel with which we've decided to concern ourselves. If we need our news wrapped in a shiny info-tainment package...woe to us all and our declining civilization.
If Jon Stewart, a comedian doing a comedy show on a comedy network, is doing the news as substantively as people who consider themselves newspeople and serious journalists, what does that say about them? It's not like these people are unintelligent, just look at the credentials on some of these correspondents for ABC News, it's rather impressive on paper: Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Stanford, law degrees, Ph.Ds in Political Science, etc.... and yet collectively they muster the same depth and breadth of what's going on in the world as a self-professed comedian on Comedy Central.
I won't even touch on cable news...where news and comment have become indistinguishably intertwined, almost to the point of absurdity, which Stephen Colbert does a great-send up of every night on The Colbert Report, and which Jon Stewart astutely pointed out about 2 years ago as a guest on CNN's Crossfire, an interview which led, directly or indirectly, to the canceling of the show Crossfire and the firing of Tucker Carlson (who unfortunately got a new show on MSNBC, and it's just as bad, although I don't think anything is as bad as Hardball with Chris Matthews. Someone should fill him in on the difference between a question and a statement. I'm sorry, Chris, but "What do you think the president should do? Do you think we should just abandon Iraq and stop fighitng terrorism, because let me tell you that is a terrible idea" is just not a question).
No comments:
Post a Comment