Howard Kurtz has a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece in The Washington Post today on Jon Stewart, whom Kurtz correctly describes "as an icon to many journalists."
And an icon to many bloggers, and to millions of Americans. So it's worth pausing over the secret of Stewart's success. And what's that? I think it's Stewart's commitment to the truth. Not "truthiness," but the truth itself. Every time Stewart goes on "The Daily Show," he confronts his viewers with the truth. But you don't have to take his word for it, or my word for it, you can see it with your own two eyes. With apologies to another great newsman, you can see it now.
But let Kurtz zero in on this key point: Stewart is an icon, he writes:
Especially those in television who sometimes copy his quick-cut editing techniques. As NBC anchor Brian Williams, a regular guest, told National Public Radio: "A lot of the work that Jon and his staff do is serious. They hold people to account, for errors and sloppiness."
And that's the key point: As Brian Williams noted, Stewart has figured out is the new potential of journalism, in the age of ubiquitous video, computers and fast video-editing. It is now possible to find what a given politician said and compare it other things that the politician said. That is, if Politician Smith said "X" on Tuesday, and then said "Not X" on Wednesday, it's more than likely that the video for both statement exists. It's just a question of collecting the two statements and juxtaposing them. (And if Stewart is funny and clever on top of that, all the better.) It's still a lot of work--Stewart has a large and talented and expensive staff--but it's worth it, because we see something on "The Daily Show" that we don't see anywhere else: the truth, put there right in front of us.
Great reporters and commentators have always gone digging for quotes to prove their argument--including their argument that a politician is a hypocrite--but Stewart lives by the discipline of showing his story, not telling it. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is video, with sound, worth?
Everyone has opinions, and that's great, but people get tired of hearing opinion from the same person. But they never get tired of hearing new things, freshly presented. And that's what Stewart does.
There's a fearlessness to Stewart, because he is, in effect, calling leaders to account every night. Which is to say, he is calling them frauds and hypocrites and liars. But he is doing it in a nice way, and he is offering proof--the video. So who, in the end, can argue with that?
Here's more from Kurtz:
But here, too, Stewart has been strafing all sides. It was no surprise last month when he made fun of Fox News hosts for supposedly celebrating Scott Brown's Senate victory, saying that reflected the network's "mission statement." But he also took on MSNBC's Keith Olbermann for calling Brown "an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against women." Olbermann once "toiled in the fields of the factual," Stewart said during a clownish impression, but "now you're just kind of calling people names."
Now of course, as Kurtz notes, Stewart leans left, politically. But he seems mostly committed to speaking, yes, truth to power. And that's why he has been increasingly targeting Barack Obama and the Congressional Democrats. It could all change tomorrow--and would, if Republicans got back in charge. And it would probably make Stewart happier to go after, once again, Republicans.
But to those conservatives who don't like Stewart, or who think that they could do a better job, The Cable Gamer says, "Do it!" Get your own video searching and editing and juxtaposing operation, and do exactly what Stewart does. It would be the makings of a great show.
But until that happens, Stewart seems to have the field all to himself.
