The end of satire
September 29th 2009 01:09
Early last week, Jon Stewart devoted the entirety of the second segment on one of his shows to sardonic jokes about how one cable news channel sometimes runs a poll where 93% of respondents favor one thing, and another channel’s poll shows 93% of respondents favoring the exact opposite thing. “It’s almost,” he burst, “as though they have completely different audiences!” Thanks for the lesson in TV economics, Jon. I never would have guessed that different news channels have different editorial positions, or that a lot of people decide which one to watch based on which one’s position is most appealing to them.
The main point of the segment was actually not terrible, namely that news channels shouldn’t present polls like this, which target and are responded to by their own audience, as reliable reflections of what people beyond that audience think. Doing so blurs the line between the news station’s editorial position and its presentation of facts as part of news stories.
Oh, the irony.
The only time a lot of people can even guess which parts of Stewart’s monologue are news and which are his opinions are by listening to when the audience laughs. Maybe you yourself look at more news than just his show and so have a better idea of what’s going on, but some of his viewers clearly do not: we’ve all seen the poll where Stewart defeated several real news anchors to win the title of “America’s Most Trusted Newscaster.” Even worse, this appears to always have been the intention behind the show’s format, suggesting that Stewart is not only dishonest but also hypocritical.
The main point of the segment was actually not terrible, namely that news channels shouldn’t present polls like this, which target and are responded to by their own audience, as reliable reflections of what people beyond that audience think. Doing so blurs the line between the news station’s editorial position and its presentation of facts as part of news stories.
Oh, the irony.
The only time a lot of people can even guess which parts of Stewart’s monologue are news and which are his opinions are by listening to when the audience laughs. Maybe you yourself look at more news than just his show and so have a better idea of what’s going on, but some of his viewers clearly do not: we’ve all seen the poll where Stewart defeated several real news anchors to win the title of “America’s Most Trusted Newscaster.” Even worse, this appears to always have been the intention behind the show’s format, suggesting that Stewart is not only dishonest but also hypocritical.
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