Nachdem Jon Stewart unter anderem den Medien am Wochenende so phänomenal die Leviten gelesen hat, fühlen sich einige Medienvertreter zu Unrecht angegriffen.
So schreibt David Carr in der New York Times:
So instead the host of “The Daily Show” took steady aim on the one American institution that everyone can agree to hate: The Media. Within the first minute of his deft, very articulate stump speech at the end of the rally, Mr. Stewart turned his gun sights on the, um, fake news, which he called, “the country’s 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator,” which, he added, “did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder.”
Dem mag sich Carr nicht ganz verschließen — er sieht die Prioritäten aber falsch gesetzt. Schließlich haben Medien doch nur einen so beschränkten Einfluss:
But here’s the problem: Most Americans don’t watch or pay attention to cable television. In even a good news night, about five million people take a seat on the cable wars, which is less than 2 percent of all Americans. People are scared of what they see in their pay envelopes and neighborhoods, not because of what Keith Olbermann said last night or how Bill O’Reilly came back at him.
Warum also hat Jon Stewart die Medien attackiert? Sie sind – so argumentiert Carr – willkommene Sündenböcke für eine Realität, die den Menschen nicht gefällt. In dem Jon Stewart die pundits beschimpfte, musste er nichts über Arbeitslosigkeit, Staatsschulden und Kriegen sagen.
His barrage against the news media Saturday stemmed from the fact that, on this day, attacking the message would have been bad manners, so he stuck with the messengers.
Ähnlich argumentiert Hamilton Nolan bei Gawker:
The media does not have the power to convince liberals or conservatives that their position is incorrect. The media does have the power to do this: draw a box, and say, „This box represents the boundaries of acceptable opinions.“ The boundaries of this box are arrived at by sampling a small range of politically acceptable pundits—say, from Arianna Huffington to Charles Krauthammer—and declaring them to represent the absolute extremes of rationality. Any opinions that fall outside of this box are dismissed as lunacy, and may be freely ignored.
Nicht Schreihälse wie Glenn Beck oder Keith Olbermann seien die Wurzel des Übels, sondern Journalisten, die Wischi-waschi-Standpunkte vertreten, um nicht aus dem Rahmen zu fallen. Der Konsens — wie auch anderswo — sei Gift.
Fuck bipartisanship. Politics is about different ideas, and many of them are irreconcilable. You have to choose one or the other. Jon Stewart is right to call for civility, but he should recognize that the real enemy is agreement, rather than disagreement. Social niceties blunt honesty, which renders our public dialogue coded and often worthless. Democracy thrives on the thesis-antithesis-synthesis process of open and uninhibited discussion and, yes, argument.
Der demonstrativ linke Talkmaster Keith Olbermann sieht sich zu Unrecht angeprangert. Stewart sei naiv — die anderen hätten schließlich angefangen. Wer zuerst aufhöre zu schreien,habe den meinungskampf verloren. Und wohin so etwas führt, wissen wir doch alle, oder?
P.S.: Olbermann will nun zumindest nicht mehr regelmäßig die „worst persons of the world“ küren — und Jon Stewarts Rede wurde autotuned: