Where does America get its news and what’s wrong with this picture?

Posted on | August 19, 2008 | 1 Comment

The NYT asked last week whether Jon Stewart was the most trusted man in America. A sad decent from the days when Walter Cronkite held that distinction but it’s probably just a sign of the times:

Most important, at a time when Fox, MSNBC and CNN routinely mix news and entertainment, larding their 24-hour schedules with bloviation fests and marathon coverage of sexual predators and dead celebrities, it’s been “The Daily Show” that has tenaciously tracked big, “super depressing” issues like the cherry-picking of prewar intelligence, the politicization of the Department of Justice and the efforts of the Bush White House to augment its executive power.

The most intriguing thing to me about the article and its subject was an observation made by Tom Brokow towards the end of it. Brokow, the last surviving member of the “Big Three” network anchors of the ’80s and ’90s (both Dan Rather of CBS and Peter Jennings of ABC have gone on to the Great Anchor Desk), noted that Jon Stewart served as the guy who was willing to say that the emperor has no clothes.

Now, what stuck me about that was this thought: isn’t that what the press is supposed to do? I mean, isn’t that the essence of whistleblowing, which I always thought was a journalist’s primary function?

I will be the first to admit that reporters have a tough time when dealing with uncooperative government sources who want you to write propaganda instead of news. But isn’t that what journalists get paid for: to investigate stuff, to find out the stuff that you have to actually exert yourself to dig out, to tell us not only what is going on but also what it means?

The Times article was friendly, tolerant, even gently admiring. But I think if the “Daily Show” phenomenon doesn’t inspire some serious soul searching in newsrooms around the country, then the fourth estate is in a lot more trouble than declining print circulation numbers and ad sales. Because if the American people find themselves forced to turn to Comedy Central for something approximating real news … well, I think that’s just sad.

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