Funny post. I think John Stewart makes a good point that many of the pundits appearing on the news media don't have any credentials to write home about. At the same time, he's kind of hateful and a little unfair. After all, what kind of experience does Stewart have besides criticizing things that other people say, and he's on an hour every night and has a huge political following. Just because a pundit worked for a failed campaign doesn't mean he isn't smart and has useful things to say.
PS - I googled the word pundit to make sure I was using it correctly, and turns out it means a certain kind of Hindu priest/scholar.
I agree in that I don't think that the former campaign workers are necessarily bad commentators; in fact, some are certainly quite useful, and I think Jon Stewart goes too far in criticizing them in this clip. However, I do think that if they have ties to a campaign or party, they need to be presented as such rather than as a "Political Analyst," which implies balance or a lack of bias. Sometimes news networks do present pundits as "Fmr. Campaign Manager" and other times they don't. I think that Jon Stewart should have focused more on this point than on criticizing campaign managers.
I don't really understand your point here: "After all, what kind of experience does Stewart have besides criticizing things that other people say, and he's on an hour every night and has a huge political following."
I don't think the issue is experience; I think that it is credibility/reliability. As you know, Jon Stewart has earned respect by being a BS detector. He shows clips of people lying, contradicting themselves, or using false logic to try to justify some phony point. He sometimes messes up, but often, he able to point out who is misrepresenting something. Stewart has a history of doing this, and that's where his credibility comes from. I think that credibility is more important than experience in this case. Bill O'Reilly has tons of experience, but little credibility.
By the way, another thing that disappointed me about this clip is that I was really hoping they would include another segment where Jon Stewart hands it off to a correspondent, saying something like, "And for more, we go to our Senior Political Analyst Analyst, John Oliver."
Haha, yeah, they missed an opportunity there. You make a good point in distinguishing experience from credibility, with Stewart having a degree of the latter (not without bias, though). I guess what I meant to say was that the pundits he names have a harder job to do in providing balanced, original analysis than Stewart does in commenting on mistakes that others have made. Meaning, Stewart isn't necessarily wrong, just kind of mean.
5 comments:
Funny post. I think John Stewart makes a good point that many of the pundits appearing on the news media don't have any credentials to write home about. At the same time, he's kind of hateful and a little unfair. After all, what kind of experience does Stewart have besides criticizing things that other people say, and he's on an hour every night and has a huge political following. Just because a pundit worked for a failed campaign doesn't mean he isn't smart and has useful things to say.
PS - I googled the word pundit to make sure I was using it correctly, and turns out it means a certain kind of Hindu priest/scholar.
John-->Jon
I agree in that I don't think that the former campaign workers are necessarily bad commentators; in fact, some are certainly quite useful, and I think Jon Stewart goes too far in criticizing them in this clip. However, I do think that if they have ties to a campaign or party, they need to be presented as such rather than as a "Political Analyst," which implies balance or a lack of bias. Sometimes news networks do present pundits as "Fmr. Campaign Manager" and other times they don't. I think that Jon Stewart should have focused more on this point than on criticizing campaign managers.
I don't really understand your point here: "After all, what kind of experience does Stewart have besides criticizing things that other people say, and he's on an hour every night and has a huge political following."
I don't think the issue is experience; I think that it is credibility/reliability. As you know, Jon Stewart has earned respect by being a BS detector. He shows clips of people lying, contradicting themselves, or using false logic to try to justify some phony point. He sometimes messes up, but often, he able to point out who is misrepresenting something. Stewart has a history of doing this, and that's where his credibility comes from. I think that credibility is more important than experience in this case. Bill O'Reilly has tons of experience, but little credibility.
By the way, another thing that disappointed me about this clip is that I was really hoping they would include another segment where Jon Stewart hands it off to a correspondent, saying something like, "And for more, we go to our Senior Political Analyst Analyst, John Oliver."
Haha, yeah, they missed an opportunity there. You make a good point in distinguishing experience from credibility, with Stewart having a degree of the latter (not without bias, though). I guess what I meant to say was that the pundits he names have a harder job to do in providing balanced, original analysis than Stewart does in commenting on mistakes that others have made. Meaning, Stewart isn't necessarily wrong, just kind of mean.
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