Here’s something you might have missed in all the talk about Iran’s “Twitter Revolution”: it’s totally mockable!
Indeed. During his segment on “IranDecision2009”—a play on The Daily Show’s “Indecision” election series—last night, Jon Stewart briefly described the unrest in Iran (framing the protests as a conflict between supporters of Mahmoud “I’m-a-dick-in-a-jad” and “the guy who looks like the only podiatrist in the city who takes my insurance”). The anchor then noted: “News reports on these incredible events have been spotty mainly because news organizations have no idea what the hell is going on there.”
Which, you know, fair enough. Stories about the Iran situation are certainly hampered by opacity, some admirable and often quite heroic attempts at shoe-leather reporting notwithstanding. And Stewart is, in addition to everything else, a media critic: not only is it fair for him to be reporting on the media’s shortcomings in covering the Iran situation; we’d hope he would do so.
We’d hope he’d do it, though, in a vaguely nuanced—or, at the very least, vaguely fair—way. Not in the way he did last night—a way that consisted, basically, of the comedian broadly mocking CNN for using Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking platforms in its reporting in the first place. “We’re looking at Facebook…we’re looking at Twitter…we’re looking at all the social networking sites, to bring in that material,” CNN reporter David Mattingly, starring in one of The Daily Show’s ironic news-clip montages, announced as he walked through the CNN newsroom—to the chuckles of The Daily Show’s live audience.
Stewart’s CNN-channeling verdict? “So we’re getting news on the possible Iranian revolution…and also reconnecting with high school friends.”
Funny (kinda), but with the government crackdown on media—foreign media, in particular—isn’t it admirable that the network cared enough about getting the story to its viewers to air information that wasn’t proprietary? Sure, maybe the network’s Facebook-happy ways were an (over)reaction to #CNNFail-gate…regardless, I’d rather that they be reporting what’s going on on Facebook and Twitter than waiting for their on-the-ground reporters to be able to get back out on the streets and do more traditional reporting.
“Whether it’s Christiane Amanpour, her producers…and sound techs getting tear-gassed while filing their reports from Tehran or whether it’s our i-Reporters sending us video and stills from the scene or people on Twitter or people on Facebook or people on Myspace,” CNN’s resident Twitterphile, Rick Sanchez, noted in his defense of CNN’s early Iran coverage on Monday, “the fact is that news gathering, as we long have discovered on this particular show, is becoming a collective pursuit. And we welcome that.” The Twittertastic kerfuffle surrounding Sanchez yesterday—not to mention his self-promotional mention of “this particular show”—don’t change the accuracy of his assessment: the demarcation that used to divide new media from old—the thick wall dividing social networking platforms from other reportorial tools—simply doesn’t exist anymore.
Except, apparently, in the strange cosmology of The Daily Show. The worst moment of last night’s segment, to my mind, came when Stewart mocked CNN’s attempts to warn its audiences of the difficulty of verifying information gleaned from social networking platforms—its new “UNVERIFIED MATERIAL” badge, in particular. (Mattingly, via the Ironic Clip Montage: “We cannot verify readily some of this material that we’re going to show you.” Stewart: “And that is different from what you normally do…how…?”)
Now, sure, there’s a hint of passive-aggressive self-promotion in CNN’s ‘Beware: Unverified Information Ahead!’ designation—normally, we verify absolutely everything is certainly one obvious implication of the warning—but, still: shouldn’t we appreciate the network’s desire to warn its audiences that the information it’s airing may not be accurate? Isn’t the caveat viewer approach a pretty fair compromise between speed and accuracy in the normally rather nuanced-challenged environment that is a cable news segment?
I’d say it is. So I’d also say that Stewart’s broad-brush treatment of CNN amounted to not only a rare misstep for The Daily Show’s normally trenchant media criticism, but also a missed opportunity. Stewart, last night, could have offered a substantial criticism of CNN’s—not to mention the other networks’—coverage of the Iran protests. He could have been a voice for resistance against histrionic treatments of Twitter—melodramatic caricatures rather than nuanced assessments. Instead, the anchor turned himself into a caricature: he fashioned himself as the crotchety Luddite who opposes new media platforms not on their merits, but because they’re new. As someone who failed to account for Iran’s exceedingly challenging reportorial context in his broad criticism of CNN. Instead, what was Stewart’s detailed, nuanced, and eminently fair conclusion about the network’s attempts to cover the Iran protests? “CNN blows.”
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Irandecision 2009 - CNN’s Unverified Material | ||||
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Why use the phrase "Unverified Material" to describe photos and videos of what's happening on the ground? It seems far more suitable to describe the delirious ranting of CNN's pundits and anchors.
I'm quite serious-- methinks the blogger doth protest too much.
Posted by Shii on Wed 17 Jun 2009 at 07:58 PM
"Isn’t the caveat viewer approach a pretty fair compromise between speed and accuracy in the normally rather nuanced-challenged environment that is a cable news segment?"
Call me old fashioned, but I prefer the highest possible degree of accuracy, at any cost. CNN is supposed to report what is happening, not what people say is happening.
Posted by Hardrada on Wed 17 Jun 2009 at 09:28 PM
Maybe I saw what I wanted to see, but I don't think Stewart was so much criticizing CNN for its use of social media in reporting on Iran as he was criticizing CNN for its use of social media in all other reporting previously, and acting like somehow using it in Iran coverage is particularly different.
Sure, they're relying quite a bit on social media right now in order to get info from Iran, and that's fine. It's also not unreasonable to explain that the source is not entirely verifiable. The problem is that even before this they would frequently reference Facebook and Twitter as if it was actual news. I think the majority of Stewart's criticism is about that past use and not the current use.
Posted by Brian on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 05:04 AM
Brian, I thought the same thing. I didn't see that Stewart necessarily had a problem with the way they were gathering their news, just with the way they acted about the way they were gathering news. I especially liked the montage of clips of viewer calls, YouTube videos, Facebook messages, etc. from previous news stories.
Posted by laura k on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 08:06 AM
@Hardrada: I definitely see that point; and 99 percent of the time, I'd wholeheartedly agree with you. But the Iran situation--as far as reporting it goes, anyway--is an exceptional circumstance: the myriad challenges to traditional reporting, to my mind, made it fair for CNN and other news outlets to make use of data from social networking sites. "What people say is happening" was, for a while, all we had to go on--and I'd prefer to learn that, vetted and hedged, than nothing at all.
@Brian, @laura k: I agree with you both that the segment was as as much about making fun of the nets' past use of Twitter, etc.--which is definitely ripe for mockery--as it was about their use of social networking tools in the coverage of Iran. But that was a large part of my problem with it: Stewart was conflating Twitter-as-a-source-for-information and Twitter-as-a-source-for-audience-feedback. Those are two totally separate things--the whole fact versus opinion divide--and the segment's failure to distinguish between the two just struck me as pretty facile, even for comedy. The Daily Show is usually much sharper than that.
Posted by Megan Garber on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 09:28 AM
To me, the concern with using things like Twitter and Facebook is that it probably doesn't demonstrate what most Iranians are thinking. I'm no expert, but I'd presume that a paltry percentage of the Iranian population is using these tools. If that's true, then such tools provide anecdotal information that is biased toward those with the means to express themselves. It's "Dewey Defeats Truman" all over again.
Posted by Matt on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 10:39 AM
Sorry, CJR, but this is no time -- or age -- for TV news organizations to be presenting us with totally unvetted pictures -- even when labeleled "unverified". Leave "people's journalism" to those who practice and support it. Call me a dinosaur, but I want my news EDITED, whether printed, verbal or visual. When I want to consume it raw, I'll go to Facebook, not CNN.
Posted by Art Kane on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 10:53 AM
Garber seems to have forgotten that Stewart is a comedian, not a journalist, and that he hosts a comedy show, not a news program. Yes, he frequently offers more astute analysis than all of the talking heads on Fox, MSNBC and CNN put together, but he's still a comedian. If he made the audience laugh, he did his job correctly.
Posted by Jonathan on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 11:10 AM
You're criticizing a comedian for criticizing a news reporting company? How ironical. Please, stick to reporting on actual journalists. That should be enough to keep you busy for at least a little while. If you get time after that, maybe Steve Colbert could be your next target.
Posted by dpjbro on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 11:10 AM
What Art Kane is describing is called "history." If he wants that level of absolutes, he can wait for the book to come out in a few years. Or he can just accept whatever the Ahmadinejad government wants to tell him now. When every single journalist without an Iranian passport or long-term work permit is kicked out of the country, the usual verification process becomes impossible.
The irony is that the Twitter-lovers that make up of a lot of Stewart's audience previously had been critizing CNN for not using the Internet enough... that is, trying to wait until at least some verifiable facts come in before just slapping any video on the air.
Stewart's segment here didn't seem particularly mean... rather a little desperate. I mean, he's gotta make fun of this situation somehow, but he can't really laugh at what the protesters are going through. So he picks a target of opportunity. Fox isn't giving him much material since they're barely covering Iran at all.
Posted by arky on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 11:42 AM
@Jonathan, @dpjpro: Sure, Stewart's a comedian. But that's certainly not all he is. Sorry to resurrect the tired old young-people-get-their-news-from-The Daily Show data again, but I do think it's instructive here: Stewart and his fellow comedians may not report the news, but they frame it...which, last I checked, is a key responsibility of journalists. And they have a huge impact in doing so. While Stewart certainly isn't a contemporary version of a Walter Cronkite, he is, to my mind, a contemporary version of an H.L. Mencken or a Russell Baker--someone who blends humor and the news to great effect. In that, Stewart has a responsibility to viewers that's much more significant than simply making them laugh--one that he exercises regularly (remember Stewart's voice-of-populist-rage interview with Jim Cramer earlier this year?). He can't have it both ways, though: if Stewart's going to play the role of a journalist, then "but I'm a comedian!" won't fly as a response when he drops the ball. Responsibility has to come with accountability.
@arky: I agree that the segment seemed desperate. That's another of its unfortunate aspects: the segment was taking a pot-shot at an easy target (CNN), when it would have been much fairer--if harder--for it to take on an outlet like Fox...whose relatively meager coverage of Iran, to my mind, makes it much more deserving of criticism than CNN.
Posted by Megan Garber on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 12:13 PM
1)Who cares what Jon Stewart thinks. It's a comedy show.
2)CNN needs to be spoofed just as much as the conservative media Jon spoofs.
3)Methinks it's time for everyone to stop worrying about trivia like this and worry about healthcare, the deficit and helping out someone in need.
Posted by radioboy20010 on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 12:18 PM
I'm sorry, but in my opinion CNN wavers between news and entertainment, the lines frequently so blurred it is difficult to take their reporting very seriously. Recently Wolf Blitzer accused President Obama of "refusing" to use the word "terrorist" in a speech. What an interpretation! How subjective. If I choose apple pie for dessert instead of pumpkin pie can you say that I refused to eat pumpkin pie? Jon Stewart is a comedian and makes no bones about it, while Mr. Blitzer professes to be a stalwart among the bastion of responsible journalists. I tend to disagree. CNN - like Fox - is more pompous entertainment disguised as serious news reporting.
Posted by Michael Snyder on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 12:26 PM
My sense is that Stewart wasn't mocking the use of Twitter so much as the commentary that the network was "loosening standards" or distributing "unverified material" by reporting on Tweets. These disclaimers are both a strange gimmick and mired in the conventional wisdom that CNN typically fact-checks everything up the wazoo.
Posted by David on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 12:32 PM
i read cjr because it deals with real journalism, not what we have recently been deluged with -- the world of bloggers as experts. stewart seems to be upholding the standards of journalism in his piece on iran, something i thought cjr would fully embrace.
Posted by pat on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 12:33 PM
While I certainly appreciate the critique of Stewart's media analysis as less than complex, it's interesting that no one has yet commented on a central irony here: that Stewart is being critiqued for a less-than-nuanced, less-than-complex, and less-than fair critique on his comedy show premised on the presentation of "fake news". While I have often used Stewart's show as a teaching tool in my political communication class, and I have often admired TDS as an example of intelligent, incisive political and media critique, I still recognize and appreciate the show's occasional reliance on banana peel and fart joke humor. It is, after all, first and foremost, a work of entertainment in a genre that functions through purposeful exaggeration of flaws in order to disrupt audience expectations; i.e., comedy.
We have evolved to an interesting place, haven't we, when this article and the five responses to it treat Stewart and his show essentially the same way they might any other news critic, and express disappointment that his analysis does not live up to otherwise suprisingly high critical expectations. In doing so we have taken for granted his status as a journalist and media critic without question... and in doing so, endorsing the assumption Stewart actually critiques in his piece, that all new media sources should be perceived as equally meaningful, accurate and useful as traditional media.
Posted by Stephen Klien on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 12:39 PM
"POST" what's "going on" on Facebook and Twitter? You call that reporting?
Please give me a break. Stewart is spot on. Moreover, as the storm in Iran was actually breaking, we were "treated" to interminable segments on George H.W. Bush's "heroic" parachute jump, mostly a silly forum for HLN's (formerly CNN's Headline News) Robin Meade to talk about herself, and herself, and herself. Serious news, that!
CNN is a joke as a genuine news organization, just in a different way from Fox, which is mostly the Rush Limbaugh network. Chastising The Daily Show for pointing it out "without nuance" is why CJR mostly faiils at its mission - we are TIRED of the "nuance" and as Joe Friday would say, we'd like ONE news network to give us "just the facts."
Posted by Bill on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 12:43 PM
CNN's use of "unverified" seems similar to the "process model" of journalism touted by bloggers and championed by, among others, Jeff Jarvis. I'm not a fan, but when journalists have their visas expire and not renewed, telling the story as best you can becomes even more vital. Hell, even the NYTimes often includes in stories such lines as "this information could not be independently verified." Given the role of social media by Iranian protesters, using it in this way makes sense -- as long as you warn people that's what you're doing and why.
Posted by Barry Hollander on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 12:47 PM
The writer misses the point: Stewart wasn't lampooning the "twitter revolution" so much as he was lampooning the overhyped commentary and punditism that appears on all four news networks during a "live" event. I am frequently frustrated when watching an "event" unfold only to be barraged by uninformed speculation by people who feel they must speak constantly. If one doesn't know something, one shouldn't speculate and I think that was Stewart's point. The 24 hour cycle is about 22 hours worth of speculation most of which is unverified.
Aviation accidents are a perfect example - the networks do a laughable job covering these and often their "experts" offer useless information/speculation to fill time. A recent favorite was listening to the Fox experts discuss how the cold water of the Hudson river would make for a better, more stable landing surface than warm water. Huh?
Posted by jgamble on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 12:53 PM
I second the previous two comments. You expect far too much. Let it go.
Posted by bw on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 12:58 PM
Great piece! I like it all but the "?" after #DailyShowFail. Stewart dipped a little low. Some of the jokes were a bit cheap, I think, because he was leaning on a kind of social media hype-busting schtick that's just too easy.
Posted by Josh Young on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 12:59 PM
The point is that it is a slippery slope when a major news outlet is using 'unverified' material as a basis for their reports, and a social network at that. My cousin Earl has a Facebook page but I don't want my news from him. Add in the fact that 90% of what people put on their pages is B.S. and you have a major disaster in the works when every story that sounds good (or bad) goes out without fact checking.
Posted by Ed Ruff on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 01:11 PM
Even though he has a dumb way of saying it I agree with John Stewart. I think that the reporting should be done by real reporters. Not people on the street, because this has caused very clouded reporting and not detailed journalism.
-Nikki-
selling photography 101
1 dollar ebooks
Posted by Nikki Thomas on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 02:25 PM
No, Ed Ruff, slippery slopes are for reporters who don't have any traction on their shoes. Your example of Earl is a red herring, and your worry, while directionally correct, is overblown.
Should major news outlets publish wild speculation from unidentified members of far-flung social networks? Of course not. But in the absence of official boots on the ground, should reporters take a look at all information available, including what appear to be eye-witness reports, and make intelligent news judgments on the fly, reminding readers and viewers when appropriate about the unverified state of some claims? Sure, I think so.
What if your cousin had snapped a photo from the scene of some disaster? Would you ignore it just because he posted it to facebook, which is where he might post all his photos?
Posted by Josh Young on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 02:53 PM
Just like the rest of the Twitter haters, John Stewart is a ignorant fool.
Posted by Shaun on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 02:56 PM
Next time the author hears that funny whistling sound, she should look up. It may be another point going over her head.
Posted by firedmyass on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 03:09 PM
Stewart wasn't criticizing CNN's use of Tweats and blog posts from people on the ground in Iran. He was criticizing the clumsy and perfunctory asides by the anchors who stopped what they were doing to make sure people knew that "Todd in Green Bay" had something totally inconsequential to say.
Posted by Erik Ugland on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 03:33 PM
The problem isn't CNN's use of crowd sourcing. Rather, it is CNN's decision not to verify solely because it needs to fill up air time. The caveat it offered its viewers was self-serving. A news outlet has a responsibility to do its best to verify information. A news outlet should be helping us make sense of breaking news. Unfortunately, cable news outlets are fond of showing several minutes of video of a firing raging somewhere, for example, yet the newscasters are unable to tell us the basic Ws about the fire.
Do the CNN editors and reporters have any idea who is twittering? Do they know whether the twitters are first-hand witnesses? The NYT reported, "A Web site called Twit Spam has posted a list of what it says are “possible fakes accounts” on Twitter that “may have connections to the Iranian Security apparatus.” —http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/updates-on-irans-disputed-election/") On the Internet know one knows you are a dog.
Finally, Stewart is a satirist who uses comedy to critique the press, politics and society in general. Garber sounds a bit like Tucker Carlson complaining that Stewart's interview with John Kerry wasn't tough. "STEWART: ... The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls."
Posted by Arthur S. Hayes on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 05:36 PM
Arthur Hayes you hit the nail on the head. Hearsay shouldn't be reported as news, period, and I know the situation in Iran doesn't leave us with many options, but that's no excuse for passing along unverified messages from anonymous Twitter accounts. CNN is playing a dangerous game here.
Posted by Hardrada on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 06:57 PM
If you take the show as a whole you would see the nuance in Stewart's comment “And that is different from what you normally do…how…?” In the past, Stewart has mocked the cable 3 for their amateurish breaking news styles, especially when they show a video feed and make comments like "we don't exactly know what we are seeing here, but when we do we'll let you know."
Posted by mark on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 07:09 PM
"I know the situation in Iran doesn't leave us with many options, but that's no excuse for passing along unverified messages from anonymous Twitter accounts..."
I think there's some misunderstanding here. CNN has made it clear on the air that they're not just putting on any ol' YouTube video they see. They say they're double checking the accounts against each other AND their sources in Iran before broadcasting them. They just can't get absolute confirmation given the government's restrictions. Those who insist that Garber take the Daily Show critique in its full context... you should probably give real journalists at least the same courtesy you give fake ones.
Posted by arky on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 08:20 PM
Your problem here is that you are focused on Stewart's segment on coverage of Iran, specifically. He has mocked CNN's reliance on Twitter, etc., before the Iran situation occurred.
Have you not noticed that CNN has devolved into an unbearable, unwatchable, entertainment channel, whose anchors fill otherwise empty time with inane feedback from viewers via Twitter, Facebook, etc., ad nauseum? I stopped watching CNN over 3 months ago, just because I couldn't believe that the anchors were wasting my time reading internet comments submitted by idiots. That is the real issue here. It's truly unbelievable. And Stewart seems to be the first person to notice it. Good for him.
Posted by Alina on Thu 18 Jun 2009 at 08:42 PM
Why has the Daily Show become even a remotely important part of America's media/political debate? It is, and pretends to be nothing but, a comedy program. Things are offtrack when journalists and commentators start analyzing Jon Stewart's mock analysis of their profession and product. After all, it is just satire (and funny at that). In the words of the Joker: Why so serious?
Posted by Geoff on Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 12:47 AM
CJR EPIC Fail! Someone's got their eye on a CNN internship!
"isn’t it admirable that the network cared enough about getting the story to its viewers to air information that wasn’t proprietary?" -- Is that a joke? Because it's not funny.
"shouldn’t we appreciate the network’s desire to warn its audiences that the information it’s airing may not be accurate?" -- Again, not funny.
"Hey, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says we can't go out and do our job today, so let's throw it to this 19 year old kid in Tehran with a cellphone and a bullet in his shoulder."
A reporter reports and gathers information and transmits news until someone puts a bullet in the back of their head. You don't sit it out because the government says so.
Posted by al on Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 06:15 AM
The mortgage industry collapsed because of abandoning reliable and honest business practices. Like making loans the bank kept on their books and they were responsible for, is journalism headed to the same fate?
"Get it fast, get it first, BUT get it right."
"If your mother says she loves you, check it out."
These rules are even more critical in the new world of still and digital manipulation and instant access to reporters from anyone with a cell phone, computer, camcorder or audio recorder who can convince a 22 year old assistant associate assistant booker that the info they are getting is real and accurate. Then it’s on the air.
Media, print and broadcast if full of trivia, celebrity and unverified news.
And the genius CEOs of Gannett and Time Warner wonder why circulation and audience are declining.
Posted by Journalismofthepast on Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 08:20 AM
It's satire.
Take a pill or stop watching.
Posted by Jason on Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 08:40 AM
Thanks, everyone, for the comments. Sorry to perpetuate the tired old "is Jon Stewart a journalist?' meme, but it does seem that the reactions here have broken down along those lines: between those who see Stewart as a purveyor of information (and thus as having a kind of journalistic responsibility to frame his segments fairly and accurately, if hilariously), and those who see Stewart as a comedian, and nothing more (and thus find criticism of him beyond the 'he's-not-funny' strain to be point-missing/overblown/probably issued by someone in need of a certain stickectomy).
I, obviously, fall squarely into the former camp: to me, The Daily Show--funny as it (usually) is--is more than comedy. It's political commentary. If it isn't straight, traditional journalism--hey, few things are anymore--then it at least has journalistic elements. Which is more than just semantic hot air. As I said in a comment above, I tend to see Stewart as a contemporary version of an H.L. Mencken or a Russell Baker--a satirist, sure, but, in that, someone who frames the news and affects the way his audience interprets current events. That's a journalistic role, and one that Stewart has increasingly embraced as he's grown into his Daily Show anchor chair. (Again, remember Stewart's voice-of-populist-rage interview with Jim Cramer earlier this year? Remember how everyone praised him--rightly so--for stepping into the void journalists had left after they'd dropped the ball on the financial-crisis story?).
But Stewart can't have it both ways, and neither can we: if we're going to be praising him for his journalistic stylings the one day, we can't dismiss his own journalistic ball-dropping with "he's just a comedian" the next. And a segment that doesn't bother to differentiate between social networking as a source for on-the-ground information and social networking as a PR-driven tool for audience feedback--two fundamentally separate things--most definitely drops the ball. Particularly when it fails to acknowledge the key variable when it came to the traditional reporting of the Iran protests: the fact that the government was preventing that reporting from happening in the first place. Stewart's treatment was reductive, unfair, and, worse, misleading...even as it was pretty hilarious. There has to be some accountability in that--even for someone who serves up his analysis with healthy heaps of humor.
PS. To those of you who likened me to Tucker Carlson in the comments above, I have to take exception to that allegation. Mostly because my collection of bow ties is infinitely nattier than Tucker's.
Posted by Megan Garber on Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 09:24 AM
Beyond The Daily Show which is, after all, a humorous entertainment program and doesn't present itself as anything more than a trenchant Bob and Ray routine, I have to agree with Journalismofthepast, Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 08:20 AM.
Although I've been out of the business for three decades, if I had tried to get this sort of reporting on a foreign election past my news director, he would have said, "Report only what you can confirm, you idiot," and looked at me like I had grown a third eye. The number of disclaimers in my newscast would have been without standing.
For that matter, if I had used a 'social networking site' or something like Twitter as sources in an assignment in my barely-reputable journalism course, my teacher would have made me a laughingstock example of 'bad journalism' to the class.
I understand CNN has a lot of airtime to fill, but there are other things going on in the world -- the main point of this exercise seems to be that Time Warner can get this information for free, and it requires no production effort other than deleting the occasional expletive.
This isn't journalism, it's glorified gossip.
Posted by RSJ on Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 09:55 AM
"Stewart's treatment was reductive, unfair, and, worse, misleading"
You state this as fact, Megan, but it was none of those things. When you're CNN, and one of the largest distributors of "news" in the world, you can't be treated unfairly after you've tacked a "Unverified Material" logo onto your broadcast. And what did Stewart say that was misleading?
You're right, Stewart should be held to one standard, whichever one it is you choose. But your criticism just doesn't hold water. Stewart didn't sound like a luddite, he sounded like someone who didn't think CNN should be passing off Twitter updates as reporting. A sound position.
Posted by al on Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 10:33 AM
@al: Believe me, I have no pretensions that my opinion, about Stewart or anything else, is fact! Nor do I suggest that in anything I've written above. It goes without saying that, in media criticism as in most everything else, a hearty "IMHO" can be appended to a good 99 percent of all declarations you read, even if those declarations lack an explicit "I think" as a preamble.
That said: here, again, is why The Daily Show segment in question--in my opinion...I'm just saying...I think--was, indeed, "reductive, unfair, and, worse, misleading": Stewart framed the segment, initially, as a critique of CNN's reliance on Twitter for its Iran reporting. Which: great, fair enough. And then he moved to a critique of the network's "Unverified Material" badge...also fair enough. But he substantiated both criticisms using b-roll footage of Rick Sanchez and his fellow CNN Twitterphiles repeating feedback and opinions that viewers had Twittered. Which is fine for easy yucks--as I mentioned above, the networks' reliance on Twitter is definitely ripe for skewering (I've done some of that skewering myself)--but to conflate on the one hand Twitter's very real and significant utility as a mechanism for on-the-ground reporting, and on the other its use as a cheap PR tool for news anchors, is totally misleading. It does a disservice both to Twitter's important role in the Iran unrest, and to Twitter's overall significance...and thus to the viewers of The Daily Show, who were served up an inaccurate picture of what Twitter's actually about. Either one of the critiques Stewart was juggling in the segment would have been fair on its own; but merging the criticisms into one broad and reductive--if, sure, funny--takedown was somewhat akin to criticizing a news report in The Wall Street Journal by declaring a disagreement with Karl Rove's commentary on the op-ed page. It's a problem of apples and oranges. In my opinion.
Posted by Megan Garber on Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 01:52 PM
Meg Garber:
There are at least three camps in this debate. The third camp says judge Stewart as a satirist.
A satirist’s chief goal is to provoke, and to expose folly and absurdity. A satirist’s weapons include ridicule, irony and EXAGGERATION. I tend to see Stewart as a contemporary version of the first press critic, playwright, satirist and William Shakespeare contemporary Ben Jonson. Read his play The Staple of News. Judge Stewart accordingly.
Posted by Arthur S. Hayes on Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 02:13 PM
Arthur, I think you might have missed my comment above, the one in which I reveal myself to be pretty much hopelessly humorless on this particular topic: I see Stewart as more than a satirist, and so judge Stewart according to more than the basic standards of satire. Here's the relevant section:
"To me, The Daily Show--funny as it (usually) is--is more than comedy. It's political commentary. If it isn't straight, traditional journalism--hey, few things are anymore--then it at least has journalistic elements. Which is more than just semantic hot air. As I said in a comment above, I tend to see Stewart as a contemporary version of an H.L. Mencken or a Russell Baker--a satirist, sure, but, in that, someone who frames the news and affects the way his audience interprets current events. That's a journalistic role, and one that Stewart has increasingly embraced as he's grown into his Daily Show anchor chair. (Again, remember Stewart's voice-of-populist-rage interview with Jim Cramer earlier this year? Remember how everyone praised him--rightly so--for stepping into the void journalists had left after they'd dropped the ball on the financial-crisis story?).
But Stewart can't have it both ways, and neither can we: if we're going to be praising him for his journalistic stylings the one day, we can't dismiss his own journalistic ball-dropping with "he's just a comedian" the next. And a segment that doesn't bother to differentiate between social networking as a source for on-the-ground information and social networking as a PR-driven tool for audience feedback--two fundamentally separate things--most definitely drops the ball. Particularly when it fails to acknowledge the key variable when it came to the traditional reporting of the Iran protests: the fact that the government was preventing that reporting from happening in the first place. Stewart's treatment was reductive, unfair, and, worse, misleading...even as it was pretty hilarious. There has to be some accountability in that--even for someone who serves up his analysis with healthy heaps of humor."
Posted by Megan Garber on Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 02:40 PM
"It does a disservice both to Twitter's important role in the Iran unrest, and to Twitter's overall significance...and thus to the viewers of The Daily Show, who were served up an inaccurate picture of what Twitter's actually about."
I think most of Stewart's viewers already know what Twitter is about. And they're still okay with it being made fun of like this because it all IS a little ridiculous.
Posted by JulieH on Fri 19 Jun 2009 at 02:41 PM
Megan, I really disagree with you that Stewart belittled Twitter. I think he belittled CNN for substituting actual reporting for Twitter updates. Which, like I said, sounds positively idiotic when a massive news corporation "can't" report so they rely on people in the streets with cell phones to do their work for them.
Really, I just don't understand how the Iranian government can tell CNN or the international media or whatever that they "can't" report and CNN says, ok, and hunkers down in a hotel room. If you're okay with a government telling you when you can and can't report, then you're not a news organization. You're just chumps.
Posted by al on Sat 20 Jun 2009 at 12:14 PM