Jon Stewart rode off into the sunset last week, appearing for the last time as host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” It ended 16 years of high-level political satire, comedy, commentary and skewering aimed at both sides of the aisle. He transformed how we consume political information. Good stuff.
It also sparked a pretty good debate at KFGO, triggered by a “news museum” in Washington, D.C., announcing it would acquire the set of the final “Daily Show” for display. In a news release, the museum repeated a theme that had become common the last several weeks: that Stewart “has been called ‘the Walter Cronkite of the millennial generation.’”
This set off a couple of crusty newsmen in The Mighty 790’s news room – OK, I’ll name them: Jim Monk and Paul Jurgens – who were incredulous Stewart’s program was being viewed as a news show and he was being compared to Cronkite, the sainted giant of 1960s and ‘70s TV news.
“He’s a comedian,” Jurgens said of Stewart.
“He’s a commentator, not a reporter,” said Monk.
While I kindly pointed out that Cronkite himself engaged in commentary from time to time – anybody remember Vietnam? – and that other broadcasting titans like Edward R. Murrow and Paul Harvey were commentators, the bafflement by Paul and Jim was not altogether misplaced.
What role did Stewart play in modern news media? How seriously should people have taken him?
It’s a fact we get our news from sources never imagined even 20 years ago. What was once the exclusive domain of television networks, radio stations and newspapers is now a free-for-all of 24/7 news channels, web sites, podcasts, social media, satellite radio, smart-phone text alerts and a dozen other things. That’s in addition to traditional outlets.
Surveys show young people get much of their political news from Facebook and other social media sites. Many also admit getting their “news” from Stewart’s show.
This is the landscape of modern media. Where there were once distinctive lines between “serious” newscasts and “farcical” commentators, it’s become jumbled with the democratization of information. When I was growing up, Cronkite and Dan Rather and Peter Jennings delivered the sobering news of the day at 5:30 p.m. … and then Johnny Carson made jokes about it at 10:30.
Now, news outlets break stories on Twitter at 8:48 a.m. and the world is tweeting commentary and analysis at 8:49. The 10 p.m. local news or the daily newspaper landing on a doorstep at 6 o’clock the next morning seems terribly quaint by comparison.
That’s the world into which Stewart evolved. Yes, he was a comedian. But he was also able to inform, analyze and comment in an absurd way from which you couldn’t turn away. For people tired of watching self-serious, dour-faced anchors read news from a Teleprompter, Stewart was an Arctic blast of fresh air.
Stewart was possibly the best interviewer on modern television. He was smart, informed, smart, funny, fearless and smart. Did I mention how smart he was?
If a comedian is able to deliver information in a digestable, understandable, entertaining manner consumed by millions, then why shouldn’t he be viewed as a form of newsman? It’s traditional media’s fault they didn’t think of it first.
North Dakota State political science professor Thomas Ambrosio, a regular guest on my show, said he believed Stewart changed over the years and became what he said he’d never become: a jaded partisan hack.
Ambrosio’s beef is that he thinks Stewart went from equal-opportunity satirist, pointing out the absurdity and hypocrisy of American politics generally, to a liberal apologist who would endlessly hammer Republicans and only skewer Democrats once in awhile in a grasp for “balance.”
Stewart, at least in Ambrosio’s eyes, went from upstart outsider to elite insider.
Maybe so. Stewart’s show certainly became the hip place to be. It was worth something for politicos to be on “The Daily Show.” That in itself probably qualifies him as cozy mainstream media.
And that means, Mr. Jurgens and Mr. Monk and all you other crusty newsmen out there, that Jon Stewart can be viewed as a journalist of sorts. Steward was a comedian, yes, but when a large slice of America viewed him as their source of information and a sort of personal B.S. meter, he had a bit of Cronkite in him, too.
(Mike McFeely is a talk-show host on 790 KFGO-AM in Fargo-Moorhead. He can be heard 2-5 p.m. weekdays. Follow him on Twitter @MikeMcFeelyKFGO.)