Jon Stewart is my hero
There’s an article on CNN about how Jon Stewart is “getting serious”. This article is making reference to Jon Stewart’s comments on CNN’s own Crossfire, where he blasts the show as being “bad for America”. He says that there is a lack of real political discourse in the media as media outlets are more interested in ratings than informative news stories.
I could not agree more. I think, at heart, is the issue that cable news channels must live on ratings, must get money from advertisers based on ratings. In such a system, the cable news program that has more flash than content wins out over, perhaps, the more informative view because it feeds back into our own fast-forward culture giving us what we want, whether it is good for us or not.
I want a news station where an editorial staff makes a call and shows stories that they consider important: world politics, US foreign policy, important domestic affairs… wouldn’t it be great to see a news program where the anchors said, “Slow news day, here’s some catching up we’d like to do. We didn’t cover these stories in enough depth the first time so we’d like another shot.” But that doesn’t up the ratings, now does it?
Showing, as Stewart puts it, two “political hacks” duking it out but not resolving anything, not putting anything new out there, not even really making a point so much as trying to score them seems to me as though we’re giving the American public exactly what it wants—a little escapism cloaked as political informativeness. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, no, you are not well-informed if you watch these shows because these shows, strictly speaking, do not inform so much as entertain. I’m not saying it’s not valuable, but it certainly doesn’t hold as much value as, say, reading The Guardian.
UPDATE: This guy has great things to say. Here’s the iFilm link if you haven’t seen it (even better than the transcript!). Wonkette.com lists a bunch of places to get the video (including a BitTorrent link).