Jon Stewart’s latest installment of “The Problem With Jon Stewart” S2E12 Trump Indicted is, funny, insightful, intelligent and to my gratification the return of the caustic witted humorist to comedic heights last reached as host of the Daily Show. I am obviously a big fan.
But upon further contemplation I digress on my opinion of the episode. Aiming their ire at cable television for over hyping and obsessing about a former president’s indictment makes good political humor television, unfortunately the writers of the show are guilty of scoring cheap points.
Decades ago, serious television journalists turned down lucrative positions on morning shows because it fell under the network’s entertainment programming budget and thus was pressured to generate profit for the corporations. Nightly news programs were exempt from the ratings race as it was considered public service which the FCC mandated at the time. Today all news broadcasts, especially the mighty cable news networks, are about quarterly profits and shareholders prosperity, causing the bottom-line feeding frenzy that has been operating for a long time.
With the advent of social media, these dinosaurs are competing not only with a million points of light, but the notion of truth serves as an obstacle to the communication made. For journalists practicing with integrity and accountability it’s equivalent to fighting with both hands and legs tied behind their back.
So of course, a news story judged “historical” as Trump’s indictment clearly is, will be hyped up to the max, viewership emotions whipped into a frenzy, journalistic parameters dashed to the crashing cliffs below, all in pursuit of the bottom line.
The producers and writers putting on TPWJS know this and have known this for a very long time. Jon Stewart has been making this point almost since the inception of this perfect storm brewing late in the last century.
So why does Stewart demand a modicum of journalistic integrity? Because he himself is reaching for low hanging fruit to produce a humorous take on today’s issues that serve the corporate gods at Apple TV +, while we the media consumer are left in the middle of an expansive corn maze with no GPS to guide us through.
And that’s the way it is……