Jon Stewart The New Cronkite? Time Poll Shows He's The Most Trusted Newscaster In America
By Logan Murphy Thursday Jul 23, 2009 3:45pm
Since Walter Cronkite's passing, new focus has been put on the decline of legitimate news sources in America. The big three networks have fallen the way of the corporate cable news/propaganda networks and people are turning to alternate sources like The Daily Show to get a little truth with their news. That's why it came as no surprise that Jon Stewart was voted Most Trusted Newscaster In America in a recent Time poll.
Here's the breakdown of the results:
Jon Stewart - 44%
Brian Williams - 29%
Charles Gibson - 19%
Katie Couric - 7%
Not to take away from Stewart's accomplishments, but it does speak volumes about the way the American people view the major networks and their "news" departments -- and that they would take the word of a comedian more seriously than high profile, highly paid network news anchors.
Stewart has long taken on the corporate media, beginning with his notorious smackdown of the feckless Tucker Carlson on CNN's Crossfire in 2004, which lead to the eventual demise of the show. Since then, he has been relentless in his pursuit of the truth, and C&L has been posting videos from The Daily Show for years, along with many other blogs, big and small.
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Wow - no offense to Jon Stewart, but that just speaks volumes about how lame the mainstream press really is.
".... And that's the way it is."
Lies, deceptions, and cowering from the truth have consequences Brian Williams. Lies, deceptions, and cowering from the truth have consequences NBC.
the cable guys don't even rate a mention at this point.
I like John good comedian and entertainer but this is . . . like fantasyland
If the "birther movement" is real, then why is it not possible to trust Jon Stewart more than the clowns on MSM? Jon actually asks tougher questions than the patty cake crowd.
But hey, I can't get enough coverage of Michael Jackson, Terri schiavo, Anna N. Smith, etc etc. And I want to know exactly what happened to the fly that Pres. Obama swatted a couple of weeks ago. And when MSM feeds me what some pol has fed them from some paid-for QUITE partisan "source", then yeah, I trust Jon Stewart more. I think the only person I trust more is Michael Ware. But he's not an anchor. and david shuster.
But compared to what?
Millions of Americans tuning in and agreeing with Beck (get off the phone you pinhead!!!!), Limbaugh (I want President Obama to fail) and all the other wingnuts, Birthers, secret muslimers, State legisators who think the earth is 6000 years old, Schoolboards that still give serious thought to creation theory....
Fantasyland has already arrived!! That Jon Stewart is considered the most trusted name in News, yes, is bizarre, but also is small beer.
No, the news men are living in fantasyland. Not the comedians, silly.
If, just once during the Bush Administration, any of the "legitimate" news people would have stood up and said, "This is Bull Sh!t. We record the things you say and you're obviously lying," they might have earned more trust than a comedian.
Stewart serves a unique and incredibly important role, in that his show is not only a repository for all those news clips, but the clips are archived in an active way, used later to point out the unbelievable hypocrisy of this country's elite. They're scared of him, and I contend this is the biggest reason why. The MSM easily forgets misdeeds, but TDS? Never.
Yep x 2! If I'd been in that poll, I would have named Jon Stewart too, because he uses real news footage to prove his points and to bring hypocrisy to the light of day. And he does ask tougher questions than any of the MSM interviewers.
How ironic that an entertainer should be better at real news than the real newspeople.
Lewis Black on the Whitehouse press corps back when GWB was there....LOL
the court jesters, satirists and comics (see Voltaire, Lenny Bruce and Carlin for starters) have always filled a role in whatever form of self-governance (monarchy, democracy . . well, forget the totalitarian regimes) that was in place and that role was to keep those in power from lurching headlong into extremism of some kind. They called the Emperor out ("He has no clothes!") and kept the powermongers' feet to the fire. Stewart is cut from that cloth. The comedic veneer pays the bills but the knife goes to the heart.
Your videos with commentary is why I come here everyday. Sometimes I'll just watch and read. Sometimes I comment. Never do I regret the time.
Keep up the great work.
Thank you, dear C&L, for all that you do.
Congrats to Jon Stewart!
C&L has inspired me to do more communicating on public issues than ever before in my life. You folks are the best! (Well, except for all the typos...)
=<(8-<>)
Mazel tov, Jon!
Considering the fact that most people in the mainstream have never heard of Palast, Hersch, etc -
this is good news for the Truth.
I greatly enjoyed his smackdown of the pompous windbag Carlson.
But looking at their other 'polls' it looks ridiculous.
bashing the validity of "Polls"
Oh well
Have we, or has the MSM? Polls are good when they tell you want you want, and must be discredited when they tell you otherwise. Nonetheless, we all like looking at them.
They're not useless, just one bit of datum to add into the whole.
PLUS, I hope this serves to embarrass the MSM, if that's possible. And it'll make comedy gold for Stewart (and probably Colbert)!!!
no kidding. The MSM can now drop the facade that they are still vending news!
your opinions are wrong 19 times out of 20 with a margin of error of 0%. How's that for a poll?
The recent outcry from birthers is a clear example of why he is more trusted.
While regular newscasters had to listed to that birther bs and give airtime to people like Liz Cheney, Jon Stewart just summed it up as what it is, craziness.
Stewart is not trusted because of the jokes he says, but because he'll put crazy crap like that in perspective and actually focus on real important issues. (while making fun of them).
Either that, or he'll actually call the crazy crap, "crazy crap."
I agree, it's sad that journalism has sunk so low that we trust a comedian more than professional journalists. But as Edwin said, the MSM should be embarrassed by this. I'd like to think they'd see this as a wake-up call to get their act together. In reality, though, I'm sure they're nowhere close to hitting bottom.
Sometimes it takes the court jester, as someone here said the other day, to tell the people the truth.
and the rest of the right wing cabal on this poll?? I wish they had numbers on these fools just so we can shove it in their faces.
That is why Stewart and his staff have my vote
on the tube. Few do.
That's true on many levels. Did I ever mention I had a TV commercial on CNN International, that got global airplay? No? Well, I did. I hated to even see the damn thing. (What a dork I looked.) But, hey, I got my 15 minutes. Done- check.
Lou Dobbs is the least trusted news man on CNN. For good reason. He doesn't even believe his own crap, but he still won't stop wallowing in it.
and rightly so.
1938 was Adolf Hitler.
That was back when he rocked: then it turned ugly.
when he rocked? When was that exactly?
That's not a poll . . it's an editorial decision. Big difference.
Time's Man of the Year is not necessarily an honor - they've never said that the man of the year meant that you had done good things, only that the person in question had had a huge impact.
I'm thinking that it's safe to say that Hitler had an impact.
Ayatollah Khomeini, also Time's man of the year in 1979. The distinction is applied by Time's editorial board to the person they thought had the biggest impact on the news. I see no irony in either selection Hitler or Khomeini.
Kings kept them, because they knew that they were the only ones who will tell them the truth...
They would trust the fool more often than their advisers.
That's actually true in many countries. In Korea, the peasants put on mask plays. They told their stories through comedy and parody, and it was the only way the upper classes got any inkling of their true lives, and how ridiculous the privileged few looked to the masses.
Not that the analogy itself is incorrect, but that it "naturalises" the fact that the mainstream press is simply a toothless uncritical part of (per althusser) the Ideological State Apparatus. By saying "hey the courts had their jesters" is to ignore the other side of it: that the Kings ruled by brutal repression - a repression augmented by the authority of the church (divine right of kings and all that). We supposedly have a free and critical press. Over the years its criticality has waxed and waned, and right now it is at its lowest ebb since the 1890s.
The other side, is that journalism itself, esp. TV journalism, has truly failed - not only itself, but its audience. It used to help us make sense of the world - and after Watergate, it was especially so. TV journalists became investigative and much good happened. Then the Berlin Wall fell in and the journalists were caught flat footed. So now they go to the audience to find news. But the audience has no idea what is going on because the people who are supposed to help us understand things are the people asking us what is going on.
Adam Curtis did a short doc on this. Watch it HERE
Manufacturing consensus.
The analogy was just top suggest that Jon Stewart uses sarcasm to state the truth... It was probably the only way to get the message out at first.
I still recall "I follow a show where puppets crank phone people".
I would have to agree that the news has epically failed us, leaving the jester to be the only voice of reason.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are also helping Dave Letterman kill off Conan.
But Jon does ask real questions unlike the MSM idiots that ask what they have been told to ask.
I like it when Jon ask Brian williams about Cronkite and williams said he was what they all strived to be. Jon said how does it feel to miss the mark so far.
republicanism is a mental illness!
I like Jon's wit and timing . . "how does it feel to miss the mark so far" . . Jon's always ten steps ahead of his guests
Hey, maybe now Brian Williams will reform his show into a legitimate news program! Wow. What if a network started doing news again! Wow!
They'll just hire more tits.
It's called FOX News.
I've watched John Stewart's Daily Show from the beginning and at first it was a comedy show with political comment. With time it was apparent that his political comment was much more truthful than any MSM. I don't care about any polls, it is certainly true from my point of view. Bill Maher too for that matter.
.. .about mass media should occupy the #1 spot.
I have O'Reilly on file making just that claim.
So why is he not at least in the top 4?
ummmm. 'cuz he's a dick?
like Cheney? no way!
it was the big two evening news. People watched Cronkite-CBS, or Huntley and Brinkley (The Texaco Huntley-Brinkley Report-NBC)
Of course I was a kid and didn't really give a sh*t.
(During the 1960s and 1970s the country was limited to watching almost exclusively what appeared on the three major networks: CBS, NBC, and ABC.)
.. is that the news didn't have a 24/7 venue. I was struck when they were profiling Walter Cronkite's career that when he started at CBS in 1962the network news was only 15 minutes nightly. It expanded to 30 minutes a year later.
When time is limited you have to discipline yourself to present, as Sergeant Joe Friday would say, "just the facts Ma'am." Now that they have all the time in the world to indulge in dubious opinions, the facts those opinions supposedly pertain to are all too often swept under the rug.
all I knew back then was "I don't want to sit around watching this crap"
LOL
I could watch 1 hour before dinner Mon-Wed-Friday, usually Superman followed by Sea Hunt.
On weekends a couple hours a night. The Fugitive, Ben Casey or such, Sunday nights Ed Sullivan and an occasional Twilight Zone.
Bugs Bunny hour?
or Abbott and Costello Sat mornings once in a while.
at my place was the Lone Ranger and Bugs Bunny. Was glad my television time was limited. If it was anything like the new 24 hour, no news, and all opinion, I didn't miss anything.
They were not addicts but had their weekend favorites.
Gun Smoke . . Have Gun Will travel . . Bonanza
Perry Mason . . The Honeymooners
Ah, sweet memories ......
:)
and the machine is apparently stuck.
..that this poll hadn't come out before Williams appearance on TDS the other night. Stewart could have had a gloat-fest, which would have been pretty entertaining.
Ah, you beat me to this comment, SadBT -- but I bet Brian will be back. I hope they arm-wrestle again....
Williams had his game-face on for Stewart. Williams probably is the best of a bad lot and he's pretty funny sometimes but he knows Stewart will rip him a new one if he slips up even a little. He'll be back--that was actually good teevee.
is his handling of Democratic guests of late. His interview with Sebelius was almost to the point of pathetic. Didn't have much edge in questioning her, and let her slide in repeating the talking points de jour in the same fashion as the big networks let the Rethugs go. Seems to be that way with most Democratic guests. Oh well. Guess if you want unbiased it's better not to watch any of the media.
You know that don't you? Tucker Carlson offered the same critique. Apparently he couldn't understand either that comedy news shows aren't real news shows. Stewart never pretended otherwise and therein lies the distinction.
Jon gives the best analysis and commentary on the state of the news in the US, which is in a pitiful state.
I have very little faith in Time's Poll....
In this poll What is your favorite search engine?
49 states choose Google, Iowa chooses Bing and the results are:
Bing = 58%
Google = 39%
Yahoo = 3%
I guess Time really is now part of the MSM too!
Ughhhhh
Really? We're posting results to online polling from Time Magazine? This is not worth reading. Imagine if Bill O'Reilly had been listed as an option...
he's the only guy I trust besides Keith Olbermann for assessing nuance and free thought; hypocrisy and talking points.
And Rachel. I can't get good cable, so I have to watch them online. Countdown is usually on the msnbc website by 6:30 p.m. But it hasn't been online for two nights now, and I'm going into withdrawal....
Who would have thought Brian Williams could get 29%?
Well if the media would stop sensationalizing things and actually give us TRUE facts,then I might trust them.
Too many of them are interested in kissing butt or an a-ha moment.
I'm sure Stewart wuld be the first to say how embarrassing this is.
But in another way, it's right and proper.
He's the only one who will look at a bullshit story and say, "This is bullshit!"
And it takes a comedian to get away with it.
I love Jon, and I trust his reporting, but I trust Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann's reporting more. Steward points out the idiocy we all see going on in the new and politics with humor, but it's a condensed display. Rachel and Keith, Rachel in particular, reports are more nuanced.
I'm inclined to agree, only Rachel hasn't been around long enough to build such a bond of trust with the audience (not her fault - it will come)and Olbermann can't decide if he wants to be Rachel Maddow or Jon Stewart.
What a load of dung. This was a non-scientific poll done by Time - they have that disclosure greyed out on their site so you can hardly see it. People coming to their site voted on it, or not. Cut me a break.
Go to the Fox site and the same Poll would show Bill O'Reilly as the most trusted Newsreader in America.
i remember when cbs news jumped the shark, it was the same day that the whole rest of the televised news industry did too. cbs new execs has been holed up in boardrooms for years and they were certain , certain i tell you that the situation was under control. everything was going to be a-ok, spiffy keen-o. you see they had a plan, they were high as kites from huffing their own farts, convinced they were going to pull it off, epic failed, and i saw it all. walter signed off, dan sat down, started talking, and for one perfect moment, as i stood to turn off the tv, i knew what a cbs exec's fart sounded like.
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