where have you gone, walter cronkite?

Apparently, to The Daily Show.

Time Magazine recently conducted a poll to find out, in the wake of Cronkite's death, who the respondents considered America's most trusted newsman. Jon Stewart, with 44 percent of the vote, came out on top of the three network anchors. (In a state-by-state accounting, Katie Couric won only Iowa. But with 65 percent of the vote.)

The Daily Show has long been the top source of news for college kids. But America in general? Tells us something about network news. bk

more for the spank tank

According to this piece in Advertising Age, Jon Stewart's next target for an on-air spanking should be Sumner Redstone, who runs not only Comedy Central's parent company, Viacom, but CBS Corp as well.

(Can't remember Stewart's blistering attack on CNBC's Cramer? Go here.)

The story, by Simon Dumenco, does a great job of skewering the news media execs who with one hand still rake in the big bucks -- much like our friends at AIG -- while with the other, they continue to decimate the ranks of journalists who are the one who actually produce the product.

From Dumenco's piece:

... I'd like to see something a bit more courageous than, say, Jon Stewart bitch-slapping Jim Cramer and CNBC. Shooting fish in a barrel -- another media company's fish -- is great sport and even better TV, but what I'd really like to see, now that the media has collectively consecrated the fake news of the "Daily Show" as realer and more truthful than the real news, is Stewart going ballistic on, say, the guys upstairs: Sumner Redstone and the clowns who have been helping him "run" his media companies.

Redstone, after all, is the ultimate boss of not only the fake news but some real news, too. His ironically named National Amusements controls both Viacom (Comedy Central's parent company) and CBS Corp. Ask the gang at nickel-and-dimed CBS News how they feel about Redstone's leadership.

And let's do the arithmetic on how billionaire Redstone has further enriched himself and his executive ranks while making value-destroying decisions. In its most recent report on Sumner's compensation, covering 2007, BusinessWeek calculated that he pulled in nearly $10 mil; I can't wait for the 2008 numbers to get tallied. Go back a couple years to 2005, when Redstone was still sticking with his brilliant plan to have Les Moonves and Tom Freston co-run Viacom as co-prezzies/co-COOs (before he split the company in two). In that year Redstone pulled down $56 million, and Moonves and Freston pulled down $52 million each. And let's not forget that when Freston got iced out in 2006, he scored a $59 million severance package.

In the bizarro world of American big media, it's no wonder there's no money left for journalism anymore.

more

Phil Bronstein, former executive editor of the SF Chronicle and now vice-president and Editor-at-large, weighs in on the Stewart-Cramer inquisition (see my previous post, below). He writes that Stewart is no Edward R. Murrow (to whom The Atlantic's James Fallows had compared him).

From the post:

I didn't know Edward R. Murrow. I didn't serve with Edward R. Murrow. Edward R. Murrow was not a friend of mine. But I do know that Jon Stewart is not Edward R. Murrow. But neither is he Carrot Top. He is more like Jonathan Swift, the brilliant 17th/18th century satirist and author of "Gulliver's Travels." Only Mr. Stewart uses all sorts of contemporary visual and electronic tricks to enhance the effect.

I think Fallows might have been conflating Murrow, whose courageous and probing reporting and broadcasting stemmed the ferocious bullying by Senator Joe McCarthy, and Boston lawyer Joseph Welch, who famously asked the anti-commie crusader during a hearing, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

Jon Stewart did both: he pressed Cramer, using the CNBC host's own video interviews to trap him (just like Tim Russert used to do), and then relentlessly called him out on the contradictions. The full quote from 1954 was: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness... You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

That's pretty much what Jon Stewart said to Jim Cramer, only it took him longer.

Joe Garofoli, the Chron's media critic, also chimed in. He writes:

Stewart regularly uses the steady stream of overheated, underreported stories coming from the 24-hour cable news networks as comedic fodder. But Thursday's interview was another example of the passion for good governance and aggressive journalism that informs his satire. In 2004, he went on CNN's "Crossfire" and told the hosts that they were "hurting America" with hackneyed, partisan banter, which he found long on opinion and short on reporting. Three months later, when CNN canceled the program, network president Jonathan Klein said, "I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart's overall premise."

Last summer at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Stewart gathered a dozen national political reporters for breakfast. He scolded them for letting the 24-hour cable networks set the nation's political agenda and for being so cuddly with the people they cover. Rosenstiel said Stewart helped reshape the opinion of the Iraq war (through his ongoing segment dubbed "Mess O'Potamia") and helped highlight the foibles of the Bush presidency.

Stewart: 1, Cramer: 0

everything i learned about journalism ...

... i learned from Jon Stewart? And Campbell Brown?

You probably already saw this, but if not, listen/watch what she has to say about "false equivalency" (aka "balance), access, the Washington press corps, and partisan news media. She gets it. bk