Daily Show host blasts media for treating the “most mundane bulls**t” as “Earth-shattering”

Comedian Jon Stewart on Monday launched into a fiery rant aimed at the media coverage of former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial in the latest episode of “The Daily Show.”

Stewart spent a portion of Monday’s segment lambasting media outlets for their coverage of Trump’s criminal trial unfolding in Manhattan, in which prosecutors have alleged that he falsified business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.

“This trial will obviously be a test of the fairness of the American legal system, but it’s also a test of the media’s ability to cover Donald Trump in a responsible way. A task they have acknowledged they’ve performed poorly in the past,” Stewart said before showing a montage of clips from notable outlets like CNN and MSNBC acknowledging that they need to give less obsessive attention to the former president’s every antic.

  • @OpenStars
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    22 months ago

    Afaict he is the last “investigative journalist” left in America, though he is biased himself, yet who else comes close that amount of depth?

    • @lennybird@lemmy.world
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      62 months ago

      There are loads of investigative journalists they just don’t have the audience size these satirists have.

      Propublica does insane work. PBS Frontline as well. Amanapour. Many stories break from the likes of WaPo as well.

      • @OpenStars
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        22 months ago

        Yeah, and CGP Grey, Ian Danskin’s Innuendo Studios, I enjoy the Crash Course series though more classes than topical, and Kurzgesagt is amazing though has their own type of bias.

        But if I want to know something about e.g. Boeing or train derailments or a deep dive into student loans, or something I did not even know that I wanted to know about e.g. the current status of ethical farming wrt chocolate, or food delivery apps, he has it all covered. So it is not only the depth that is fascinating, but the width and breadth of coverage as well (both wrt a single video and moreover the number of those total).

        Unfortunately it mixes in opinion and interpretation directly integrated alongside the delivery of the facts. So it is funny (juvenile), informative (truly!), and overbearing all at once, and seems designed to leave you feeling more informed than you actually are upon watching.:-(

        Still, they offer so very many videos on so very many topics, and I have never seen anything these days that comes close - e.g. their Boeing video describes more in 10 of its 30 minutes than a typical TV “documentary” these days (at least, of the type my mother watches), and then it goes on to cover essentially what a full length feature film documentary would cover, all in something digestible while eating a lunch (or two). And I respect that so much - that takes effort and skill that is hard to match.