Jon Stewart: Our Most Trusted Newsman

Jon Stewart has his problems of bias and narrowmindedness himself, but regardless, if you want an actual analysis of news with context and questions of actual significance, there are few options on TV.  Jon Stewart is one of them.

Jon Stewart tackles topics no one else will plain and simple.

Not the first such survey I’ve seen. His audience is also more educated on the issues than those of other more “serious” shows.

John Oliver was hilariously adamant at our Campus Progress National Conference that “The Daily Show” is not really journalism. Clearly the populist view supports the opposite. Individually, I trust Jon Stewart more than any other newsperson. He’s the only person that doesn’t come across as an actor. 

we also don’t perceive John Stewart as having an agenda other than to 1 make us laugh and 2 watch his show. he’s got no real reason to lie to us/alter the truth/whathaveyou so of course we’re more likely to listen to him with more trusting ears

Jon Stewart is sadly the top news man, though Olbermann and Maddow are occasionally decent. For real news, Watch zeitgeist part 3 or hit up TheAndrewMeyer.com

are just saying that because you’re the INTERNET

DUH

To me, Jim Lehrer is the best news anchor out of anyone. That said, no one actually watches PBS. 

I wouldn’t say this has much credibility. Check out all the other polls. Someone is definitely messing with the results. Sadly, TIME doesn’t employ a very secure polling method.

We don’t get straight news anymore. It all comes with some sort of spin, slant or analysis. What this poll says is that American’s believe Jon Stewart’s is most accurate.

Conventional journalism is too stuffy for most of the American public.  The Daily Show can convey important news-worthy topics precisely because it does it in a superficially un-serious way.

The Daily Show is America’s most trusted news source not because it’s risen to the task of producing the greatest journalism but rather because the rest of the industry has fallen so low that Jon Stewart wins pretty much by default.As Stewart put, “You’re CNN! The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls! What’s your excuse?”

There is no doubt that Jon Stewart provides more accurate news than Time.

Stewart is a hell of a lot more truthful and factual than the wind bag O’reily.

Perhaps the confusion of the author of this post can be excused by the fact that the only ’share’ option is to email the story.  No one who is among the younger or younger thinking demographic sees email as the only way to share something interesting.  Instead, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, etc. are more likely vehicles I or my friends will use.

wrt: eric’s postIowa is the real maverick!

Members of the media used to understand that informing citizens of objective reality was a part of their job. To make this really basic, if one person says “the sky is blue,” and the other person says “the sky is green with purple polka-dots,” a real journalist wouldn’t say “Two different sides. Two different viewpoints. It’s a complicated issue. Back to you, Tom.” A real journalist would go outside and show that the sky was indeed blue. In other words, calling bullshit.Most journalists and pundits abandoned this job out of either fear or greed–most notably in the 2000 election, the run-up to the Iraq war, and on torture. Jon Stewart did not. He called “bullshit” when bullshit needed to be called, and at a time when it was politically dangerous to do so. Thus, he EARNED our trust. Gibson flat-out lied in a recent Democratic primary debate, and Brian Williams thought Peggy Noonan should’ve been nominated for a Pulitzer. So Stewart practically wins this list by default.

What’s Up Iowa?

Bias of the poll aside, I totally agree. Jon Stewart is our most trusted newsman. I also think Brian Williams is great. He does a great job of, well, reading the news. But I like him better when he appears on The Daily Show. Funny, really, isn’t it?Stewart has a created a position for himself that allows him to say the things that all of us, Brian Williams included, really want to say.We get our facts from a thousand different sources. We’ve all become pretty good at noticing bias. I agree with Greg. What we need, though, is someone to call ‘bullshit’ for the masses. It’s certainly not being accomplished by the no-name, overnight, credential-less pundits on the news-only networks.

 Jon Stewart would be the first to say he is not a newsman. That said he uses the news to make people laugh. He has no axe to grind ,so his own bias or views entertain us ,because we think he is doing a news broadcast ,but he is only cherry picking it for laughs.

You shouldn’t insinuate that Jon Stewart only ranks so highly only because there is a dearth of trustworthy newscasters (though there is some truth to that). He ranks highly because he exposes the hypocrisy and corruption that other newscasters have to pretend does not exist in order to keep their jobs. Stewart has reshaped The Daily Show to perform exactly this function. People underestimate the power of satire.

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