Jon Stewart in Awesome Fox News Interview: Media's Real Bias is "Laziness, Conflict, and Sensationalism"

 Bravo:

The bias of the media is towards laziness, conflict, and sensationalism.

And  NOT,  a liberal bias.

And then they moved on to the shot that has already been heard around the world:
Chris Wallace plodding on trying to 'prove' that the media has a liberal bias. He even prefaced his question by admitting he had proof. The media breathlessly awaited the recent release of Sarah Palin's emails as governor, and both The New York and LA Times asked their readers to help them sift through the voluminous tome. Why didn't they ask their readers for help in going through the 2,000 page Health Care Reform Bill? And here is where Jon Stewart has earned my undying love and devotion: It's not proof of liberal bias, it's proof that the media is a bunch of lazy-assed sensationalists.

YES!

""I think their bias is towards sensationalism and laziness. I wouldn't say its towards a liberal agenda. It's light fluff so it's absolutely within the wheelhouse," Stewart said. ""If your suggestion is that they're restlessly partisan, then why haven't they gone and backed away from [Rep. Anthony] Weiner?"

"They jumped into the Weiner pool with such delight and such relish," Stewart said.

However, what will be (and already is) plucked out of this whole interview is that Stewart 'admits' that there is a liberal bias in the media, which paraxodically the constant repetition of this will prove that in fact, there is no liberal bias.

Jon Stewart sat for a combative interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this morning. At one point Stewart flat out told Wallace “you are insane” as he stuck to his argument that Fox was an activist propaganda organization compared to The New York Times which Stewart described as just “relentlessly lazy.”

Stewart did admit that, “There is a liberal bias that exists in the media because of the nature of the medium.” He also acknowledged that conservatives have a legitimate gripe against elite media: “People on the right are called racist and called things with an ease that I am uncomfortable with … and I’ve been guilty.”

This appears to be the whole interview:

 

Having trouble embedding due to Javascript/browswer incompatibility issues , but a long clipa appears here (scroll to the bottom)

TO VIEW THE WHOLE INTERVIEW YOU MUST NOW GO TO THIS LINK AND SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM:

http://www.mediaite.com/...

The whole interview will appear later today on Fox News here.

Thank you Jon Stewart.  Thank you for appearing on Fox News, being interviewed by Chris Wallace, and being so well prepared today.

This was like Jon Stewart on Crossfire, 2.0.  He now knows what other 'journalists' think of him, what they are going to 'grill' him on and how to handle it. How sad, that the media's most intense efforts are focused on trying to prove that Jon Stewart has a liberal bias, and insist on trying to get him to say he is a journalist and not just a comedian.

 

I do sometimes watch Chris Wallace on Sunday mornings and caught this interview as I was flipping through channels. Wallace can do a good job when he is into it, like his recent interview with Tim Pawlenty that focused on how Pawlenty would extract more spending cuts from the budget than even Paul Ryan, without immediately slashing Medicare benefits (for example).

Jon Stewart took the opportunity to praise Wallace's interview skills (Wallace lapped it up not realizing Stewart was setting him up) and used Wallace's 'gravitas' (it's all relative you know) to make his point that Wallace is there on Fox as the counterweight to the extraterrestrial looniness that otherwise characterizes Fox, not as proof that Fox is a 'fair and balanced' network.

“Here is the difference between you and I,” Stewart said. “I’m a comedian first. My comedy is informed by an ideological background – there’s no question about that. The thing that you will never understand and the thing that conservative activists in some respects will never understand is that Hollywood – yeah, they’re liberal. But that’s not their primary motivating force. I’m not an activist. I’m a comedian.”

“I think that you are here in some respects to bring a credibility and an integrity to an organization that might not otherwise have it without your presence,” Stewart said. “So you are here as a counterweight to [Sean] Hannity, let’s say, or you are here as a counterweight to Glenn Beck because otherwise it’s pure talk radio and it doesn’t establish the type of political player it wants to be.”

 

Wallace persisted along this course trying to prove his point saying that Fox viewers were devoted because they were so grateful for finally having someone telling the other side of the story, not just the constant liberal media bias.  Jon countered by pointing out that Fox news viewers are consistently shown to be grotesquely misinformed on the issues of the day. He repeated it to Wallace's dead silence, spitting out the word Fffffox. There you have it, Wallace uses Fox viewers' opinions to prove his point that the media has a liberal bias, and Stewart counters with facts. Wallace had no reply, no argument, nothing, and he moved on. Move along, nothing to see here. I hope this shuts down this line of argument for good. I know I'm sick of hearing it.

 

Update: Sinan summed up the dilemma of today's media in an excellent comment here.