Joho the Blog
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March 04, 2005
We begin by watching Rob Corddry's piece on how to become a new media person, on the Jon Stewart Daily Show. Some of us are dismayed that he's taken as news, but most of us seem to think the media need to learn from it. People ask if The Daily Show is popular because it blurts out the truth, is irreverent, is passionate... (Obviously, it's also because it's funny.) Craig Newmark says one of his favorite quotes now is: "If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh. Or else they'll kill you." Anonymized comments: Jon Stewart, someone says, is liberated from having to suck up to sources. It's easier for him because he only has a couple of segments. Real journalists have to be dispassionate. E.g., if you've ever covered a plane crash... All we should learn from Jon Stewart is that media literacy in this country stinks. How do we make what we do as lively, interesting and engaging as what Stewart does, but with more content? We shouldn't pander to our readers by adopting Stewart's irony. Stewart plays the valued role of court jester, but nothing more than that. My 25-year-old daughter would say that this discussion shows that we're a bunch of old fogeys. We live in an ADD culture. We don't have enough time. We want to get news and entertainment. This is the what the customer wants. We ought to listen. The news industry is the only one that tries to adapt customer behavior to what it wants. (Murmurs of disagreement. It's called "marketing.") Discussion of the role of passion in journalism: Is it an obstacle to fair reporting? Or is it a requirement to keep news human? Rather's mistake was that he was unable to admit that he made a mistake. (Me:) Stewart is a jester, but the point is that the jester is now more trusted than the king. Stewart's object of derision is the mainstream media. If the MSM would follow a clip of, say, Cheney saying "I never said X" with the four clips where he did say X, we wouldn't be watching Stewart. Half the country hates Stewart. There's still plenty of room for non-Stewart news sources. Do the media provide a product or a service? The media don't really know what their customers want. Stewart focuses narrowly — the White House press corps, primarily — and his relevance is limited. If the media were more transparent, people would be more forgiving. It's not about journalists' passion. It's about the audience's passion. [Jay Rosen, star of the Daily Show segment, walks in late and gets a standing ovation. Except for a couple of people.] [Technorati tag: media] Posted
by D. Weinberger at March 4, 2005 09:40 AM
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"The clown is the emperor’s private self seeking contact with the people and situations that he embodies corporately in his role. … The clown is a type of audience researcher or consultant, just as our audience researchers and consultants have become the clowns of our culture. Today we see the emergence of a new type of executive who can switch roles from clown to emperor to probe the environment through his own awareness."
-Marshall McLuhan, Take Today: The executive as dropout.
"Every emperor must have his clown … In rigid hierarchical societies only this licensed character dare exercise the probe of free speech. The clown is indispensable as audience-checker … Without his clown, the emperor has no means of contact with the public."
Marshall McLuhan, From Cliche to Archetype
Posted by: Mark Federman | March 4, 2005 01:56 PM
"Stewart focuses narrowly — the White House press corps, primarily — and his relevance is limited."
True, but unlike MSM, Stewart makes fun of his limited focus. My favorite Daily Show feature is the "International News Pamphlet", which reminds viewers that, while the show generally focuses on the Middle East, "there have to be at least, oh, twenty five other nations out there..."
Remember that when you're watching CNN's in depth coverage of parliamentary elections in Moldova this weekend. Oh yeah, sorry - they've pre-empted that for more Michael Jackson trial coverage.
Posted by: Ethan | March 4, 2005 02:25 PM
When there is no opposition and no public debate, characters like Jon Stewart apear to fill the void.
For some years now, Private Eye and the Bremner, Bird and Fortune show have filled the same gap in the UK.
Posted by: Julian Bond | March 4, 2005 04:04 PM
(Me:) Stewart is a jester, but the point is that the jester is now more trusted than the king. Stewart's object of derision is the mainstream media. If the MSM would follow a clip of, say, Cheney saying "I never said X" with the four clips where he did say X, we wouldn't be watching Stewart.
I think that this, and Ethan's comment, are exactly right. I'm wondering, David, do the MSM people in the audience realize that target of Stewart's barbs is themselves as much as it is the politicians, etc., that make up the "content" of the show? Many of those comments you relay don't make it seem as though they do. It seems hard to believe that they don't....
I really like the comparison you make with Jeff's bloggers' values: "And how does this compare with the news media's current values of, approximately, trust, authority and accuracy?" MSM, mistakenly I feel, imagines that these values somehow accrue to them through their "objectivity," when Stewart is showing us that it's just the other way around. At the risk of getting all Postmodern, I'd say that objectivity as MSM imagines it is a lousy, even laughable way to get to truth. On the one hand, because of the inherent farce in professing to be a higher form of objective being (which Ethan points out so well), but also because MSM has confused objectivity with an odd, and oddly transparent, neutrality, one which leads them to say that trust, authority and accuracy spring from pretending not have a discernable opinion. Except that we all, and John Steward especially, know it ain't and they ain't.
Posted by: david the bad agent | March 4, 2005 05:13 PM
David the Bad Agent: The mainstream media folks at the conference seemed not be shocked when I pointed out that Stewart is making fun of them.
BTW, in my limited experience, journalists do not claim to be "objective." They realize that that's an impossible objective. They do, however, aiming at being fair by being balanced and bracketing their personal beliefs.
Posted by: David Weinberger | March 4, 2005 05:37 PM
I like Stewart for many the same reasons I like blogs. It may not be new news, it may just be a retelling of a story. The Daily Show does it in a way that is accessible, and they don't have the same impartial, honest, reporting that you would expect from a "major news source."
Lots of blogs out there take a meme and push it around, each bringing a local/personal slant to the story. This is what Stewart does, bringing interesting news topics to the general public with a witty liberal leaning.
Posted by: jon | March 7, 2005 06:34 PM
RE: the Craig Newmark and Marshall McLuhan quotes here...
W.S. Gilbert has Jack Point, his itinerant jester in "The Yeomen of the Guard", sing:
"When they're offered to the world in merry guise,
Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will.
For he who'd make his fellow creatures wise
Must always gild the philosophic pill."
Posted by: Stu Rubinow | March 7, 2005 09:26 PM