COMM 150: Jon Stewart pummels pundits, polls, presidential primaries - IN-CLASS BLOG EXERCISE AND DISCUSSION

Dogging the watchdogs ...

Before watching the embedded video, please read through this blog item to the end, making note of the questions I want you to post answers to in order to kick off our class discussion.

John Vivian, in "The Media of Mass Communication," says the press is traditionally known as the "fourth branch of government," after the legislative, executive and judicial branches. "Its job," he explains, "is to monitor the other branches as an external check on behalf of the people. This is the watchdog role of the press" (379-81. Boldface type in the original.) As Vivian suggests, this concept goes all the way back to Sir Edmund Burke and the English Parliament in the 1780s, and it has a long history in both English and American political thought. (A good starting point for tracing it is the article on the "Fourth Estate" in Wikipedia.) But who watches the watchdogs?

Well, academics like John Vivian, for starters.

"Although critics argue that the media are politically biased, studies don't support this," Vivian says. "Reporters perceive themselves as middle-of-the-road politically, and by and large they work to suppress personal biases. Even so, reporters gravitate toward certain kinds of stories to the neglect of others, and this influences coverage."

Vivian lists several "media obsessions" (384-85). They are:

• Presidential coverage. Instead of issues, the media like to report on personalities. So they personalize issues by focusing on the president.
  
• Conflict. Harking back to an earlier discussion, Vivian suggests "Part of journalists' predilection for conflict is that conflict involves change."
  
• Scandals. Readers like them, but emphasizing them "trivializes political coverage."
  
• Horse Races. Vivian defines them as "election campaign[s] treated by reporters like a game - who's ahead, who's falling back, who's coming up the rail."
  
• Sound bites. A sound bite, or actuality, is the term for a recorded direct quotation in broadcast journalism. It has also come to stand for a short, snappy quote that doesn't go into depth.

In addition to academics, the media monitor each other. For example, Jon Stewart's "fake news" segments on the Daily Show.

(Content advisory: A lot of people think Stewart has a liberal political agenda, and he does seem to spend an awful lot of time making fun of Republicans. But he says he likes to throw spitballs at politicians of either party, and he consistently takes out after the media. Also: As we watch his show, we also ought to keep in mind he's a comedian. He's not even trying to be fair and balanced to anybody - politicians, press or anybody else.)

The segement aired last week, after a presidential preference poll showed Repubican candidate Newt Gingrich in the lead ... how many of Vivian's media obsessions can you spot? You'll have a chance to express yourself in writing (see below for details) on this point.

Jon Stewart: Newt Gingrich Latest 'Zombie' GOP Frontrunner Who Doesn't Know He's Dead (VIDEO) (5:32)



In an interview on National Public Radio in September 2010, Stewart told NPR's Terry Gross he's especially disappointed in the media:

The [more] you spend time with the political [world] and media, the less political you become and the more viscerally upset you become at corruption. I don't consider it political, because 'political' I always sort of note as a partisan endeavor. But I have become increasingly unnerved by the depth of corruption that exists at many different levels. I'm less upset with politicians than [with] the media. I feel like politicians — the way I explain it, is when you go to a zoo and a monkey throws feces, it's a monkey. But when the zookeeper is standing right there and he doesn't say, 'Bad monkey' — somebody's gotta be the zookeeper. I feel much more strongly about the abdication of responsibility by the media than by political advocates.

So instead of watchdogs, we have zookeepers.

In a very good profile of Stewart in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times reported:a

MR. STEWART describes his job as “throwing spitballs” from the back of the room and points out that “The Daily Show” mandate is to entertain, not inform. Still, he and his writers have energetically tackled the big issues of the day — “the stuff we find most interesting,” as he said in an interview at the show’s Midtown Manhattan offices, the stuff that gives them the most “agita,” the sometimes somber stories he refers to as his “morning cup of sadness.” And they’ve done so in ways that straight news programs cannot: speaking truth to power in blunt, sometimes profane language, while using satire and playful looniness to ensure that their political analysis never becomes solemn or pretentious.

“Hopefully the process is to spot things that would be grist for the funny mill,” Mr. Stewart, 45, said. “In some respects, the heavier subjects are the ones that are most loaded with opportunity because they have the most — you know, the difference between potential and kinetic energy? — they have the most potential energy, so to delve into that gives you the largest combustion, the most interest. I don’t mean for the audience. I mean for us. Everyone here is working too hard to do stuff we don’t care about.”

Tangent: "Agita" is a cool word. I wasn't familiar with it, so I looked it up. (I Google everything.) According to Urban Dictionary, it's an Italian-American word for heartburn that's taken on a secondary meaning, "Giving you more aggrevation than you can stand."

Here are your questions. Make notes on a sheet of scrap paper as you watch, and post your answers as comments to this blog item.

In this recent segment, how much of Jon Stewart's satire is directed at the politicians and how much at the media that cover them? Is he "speaking truth to power?"

How many of Vivian's list of media obsessions do you see reflected in Stewart's monolog and the clips - sound bites or actualities - he shows in the course of the monolog?

Finally: Is Stewart a "good zookeeper?" Or is he just throwing something at the monkeys? Post your thoughts below.

Later [Tuesday, Nov. 22]: According to a story in today's Los Angeles Times, "A new survey of New Jersey voters comes to a provocative conclusion: Fox News viewers tend to be less informed about current events than those who don't watch any news at all." Washington correspondent Mike Memoli adds, "And it seems Jon Stewart may be more reliable than cable news anchors. On Occupy Wall Street, the survey found viewers of "The Daily Show" were 12 percentage points more likely to say protesters were predominantly Democratic. MSNBC viewers were the most likely to say the protesters were mainly Republicans." I'm not sure about the question: Seems to me like the protesters aren't very happy with either party. But if the question's any good, the distribution of answers is well beyond the margin of error.