Has Chris Wallace Ever Watched Jon Stewart?

Consider this article the flip side of my November 2010 article titled: Has Jon Stewart Ever Watched Chris Wallace? At that time I criticized Stewart for praising Wallace as a credible journalist despite the evidence to the contrary, which I enumerated in the article.

In this interview of Stewart on Wallace’s Fox News Sunday, Stewart continued to extol Wallace’s credibility even as Wallace demonstrated that he had none. However, Stewart was somewhat more on point distinguishing the rabid partisanship of Fox News from other media. Wallace opened the interview with a relevant and insightful quote by Stewart describing Fox News as…

“…a relentless agenda-driven 24 hour news opinion propaganda delivery system.”

So far so good. Then Wallace asked…

“Are you willing to say the same thing about the mainstream media – about ABC, CBS, NBC, Washington Post, New York Times?”

To this Stewart responded with an unequivocal “No.” He later elaborated saying that the bias of much of the media is toward “sensationalism, conflict, and laziness,” rather than liberalism. That was certainly borne out by the recent coverage that fixated on a liberal congressman’s adventures in sexting. Wallace is as oblivious to the mainstream media’s frequent bias against liberals as he is to Stewart’s regular satirizing of them.

When Wallace suggested that Stewart’s comparison of the editing techniques used in a Sarah Palin video and an advertisement for a Herpes medication was political, Stewart pointedly told Wallace, “You’re insane!” But Wallace was utterly incapable of comprehending the difference between the mockery of a person or a practice. It is the same distinction that many people miss with regard to The Daily Show. It is not, in fact, a program of political satire. It is media satire, and to the extent that it addresses politics, it is almost always with respect to how it is covered in the press.

For much of the interview Wallace attempted to portray Stewart as a “political player,” while Stewart maintained that he was, first and foremost, a comedian. In Wallace’s view there is no difference between what Stewart does and what Wallace himself does. I would say that at least one difference is that, while people are laughing with Stewart, they are laughing at Wallace. And when Wallace said that he thinks Stewart is an idealistic, partisan, activist, Stewart responded that “That’s the soup you swim in,” implying that Wallace simply can’t see it differently because of the partisanship that envelops Wallace’s perspective.

So far so good. Then Stewart referenced “ideological regimes” that get “marching orders” and Wallace asked…

“Then how do you explain me? Do you think I get marching orders?”

And here is where Stewart stumbled saying…

“I think that you are here, in some respects, to bring a credibility and an integrity to an organization that might not otherwise have it without your presence.”

Stewart is right, of course, about Fox’s lack of credibility, but he completely missed the fact that Fox is well known for issuing marching orders to their reporters. Former Fox News VP John Moody used to do so in his “Morning Memos,” and current Fox Washington Bureau chief, Bill Sammon, has repeatedly issued directives to cover stories with a specific bias. For example, he told his staff to use the phrase “government-run health care” instead of “Public Option” after establishing that public option tested better among voters. Likewise, he prohibited talk of global warming without disclaimers that there was disagreement about the theory, despite the fact that every legitimate climate scientist agrees that climate change is occurring and it is caused by humans.

Stewart should have been able to counter Wallace’s query on marching orders. Instead he gave Wallace a wholly undeserved compliment. How can Stewart regard Wallace as fair and balanced when Wallace is on record saying that, on the whole, he agrees with Sean Hannity? And where is Wallace’s integrity when he responds to Stewart’s assertion that news consumers are disappointed by saying that…

“I don’t think our viewers are the least bit disappointed with us. I think our viewers think, “Finally!” they are getting somebody who tells the other side of the story.”

That is a brazen admission that Fox’s purpose is to be biased and take sides on the way news stories are told. That quote should be chiseled into the facade of the Fox News headquarters building in New York, and it should settle, once and for all, the argument as to whether Fox News is biased.

But Stewart did get in a final dig that really sums up the role Fox plays in modern media when he noted that Fox has “the most consistently misinformed viewers.” That was a pretty gutsy thing to say to the Fox viewers who will be watching this. [Note: Stewart must have forgotten that his own viewers were rated the most knowledgeable]. Wallace didn’t even bother to rebut the point, instead he showed a vulgar and unrelated clip from a celebrity roast on Comedy Central and implied that Stewart had something to do with it. That was just a cheap shot that landed with a thud. More to the point is the fact that Stewart’s Daily Show is more popular than Fox News. Let Wallace deal with that.

[Update] I just swapped in the video above. This video contains portions of the interview that were cut out of the on-air version. Some notable segments that didn’t make it to air include Stewart asking Wallace if he “think[s] that Fox News is exactly the ideological equivalent of NBC News?” In response, Wallace said that “I think we’re the counterweight. I think they have a liberal agenda, and I think that we tell the other side of the story.” That’s another confession by Wallace that Fox is deliberately biased in a partisan way.

Also cut out was Stewart mentioning Bill Sammon’s emails, and the incident when all three networks cut away from Nancy Pelosi after she said she would be commenting on jobs and Medicare, but not Weiner. I wonder why Fox didn’t want their viewers to hear these segments.

[Update II] Jon Stewart has addressed the concerns of critics (and some commenters here) regarding the PolitiFact assessment of his remarks on Fox’s proclivity for misinformation. He notes that Fox has earned PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” award for two years running. But that aint all. Here is his informative and hilarious smackdown:

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29 thoughts on “Has Chris Wallace Ever Watched Jon Stewart?

  1. Great analysis.

    Wallace’s question, ‘You want to do Amos and Andy?’ was an unfair implication that Stewart did a racist bit on Herman Cain’s 3 page bills.

    If Wallace wanted to explore it, he should do it head on and not smear Stewart with the implication. Wallace’s approach reminded me of Hannity, who uses the assumptive close as his #1 smear tactic.

    • That was an interesting moment – a Fox News hack implying racism on someone else.

  2. More to the point is the fact that Stewart’s Daily Show is more popular than Fox News.

    Not quite. From your link http://www.politicususa.com/en/jon-stewart-fox-ratings:
    “Only The O’Reilly Factor (2.8 million) drew more total viewers than The Daily Show (2.3 million).

    “When Stewart and O’Reilly go head to head at 11 PM, Jon Stewart tops Bill O’Reilly’s replay by almost a million viewers (2.3 million to 1.321 million).”

    From your source we know that O’Reilly gets 4.121 Million Vs Stewarts 2.3 million. O’Reilly is obviously more popular than Stewart and O’Reilly is on Fox News (Channel).

    • Try to pay attention, liontooth.

      I said that The Daily Show is more popular than Fox News, not just one specific program. The Daily Show averaged 2.3 million viewers compared to only 1.85 million for the Fox News primetime lineup.

      Your argument is dishonest because you try to change the parameters of it to something I never said. It’s also dishonest to add up multiple airings of O’Reilly and compare them to a single airing of The Daily Show. And you conveniently left out that The Daily Show’s audience is increasing while Fox (including O’Reilly) is declining. But thanks for stopping by.

      • yo…I was gonna say that…you stole my wind Mark..
        4.121 million?…wtf?
        Why don’t you add all the viewers of last week while you’re at it dude?

        • “o…I was gonna say that…you stole my wind Mark..
          4.121 million?…wtf?
          Why don’t you add all the viewers of last week while you’re at it dude?”

          I’m using the data he provided, dude. And if Stewart is more popular than “Fox News”, that means less than 2.3 million people watch Fox News.

      • “I said that The Daily Show is more popular than Fox News, not just one specific program.”

        Which is of course wrong. Stewart is only on for 1 hour, Fox News is on 24 hours.

        • Dude…Stewart is on for half an hour..4 days a week…
          and yes he’s more popular than the entire FoxNews primetime line up..I know it hurts but that’s a fact.Only O’Reilly gets more and not when Stewart is on.
          Learn to read buddy…
          Or you can keep on adding viewers to make the point that you’re a dishonest twit…
          There is always that option.

          • “Dude…Stewart is on for half an hour..4 days a week…
            and yes he’s more popular than the entire FoxNews primetime line up..I know it hurts but that’s a fact.Only O’Reilly gets more and not when Stewart is on.”

            O’Reilly is part of the primetime line-up. You seem to grasp that more people watch him than Stewart. So how again is Stewart’s 1/2 hour MORE popular than “Fox News” and not whatever show Stewart is on against?

            “know it hurts but that’s a fact.”
            That’s funny! Like it really matters whether it’s 1, 2, or 3 million people. It still is less than 1.5% of the US population.

        • Stewart’s ratings ARE NOT declining. You’re being dishonest again.

          Those numbers are for just one week that was a week of reruns. Over the long term his ratings have been increasing by every measure: Year-to-date, Year-over-year, etc. Fox has been dropping like a stone.

          • I think at this point it’s fair to assume he’s just trolling like a little ….
            Btw..I really like your site…good job.

            • I think it’s a fact that you actually believe that taking O’Reilly’s numbers + 2 loser shows and taking the average = Stewart is more popular than Fox news. You’re just upset you’ve been called on it.

          • They’re not my numbers, But let’s deny it and shoot the messenger.

            Is that like adding up O’Reilly show with 2 other loser shows, TAKING THE AVERAGE of all 3, and claiming Stewart is more popular than the average?

            • So you’re admitting that 2/3rds of Fox’s primetime lineup are losers? OK, I’ll take that.

  3. Yea I had a strong feeling watching it this morning that the editing made Stewart look soft as much as they could…and there you go with the Sammons and the Pelosi examples that were, of course, cut…
    I always wonder why they invite Stewart…to get spanked?
    But obviously they invite him to try and make him look weak by editing the shit out of him…which is very telling.
    Bunch of cry babies they are..attacking like crazy all the time and then try to pretend they are victims of the “lame stream media”…
    How can you be so proud of having the top ratings in cable news network and at the same time claiming you’re not “mainstream”?
    Fixed News is a bunch of hypocrites if you ask me.
    Fucking biggest news corporation on the planet backing them and even telling them what to say on air,and they have the guts to talk about “bias” in the media….fucking cocksuckers man they piss me off.
    Sorry about the language.

    • I share your pain, Benny … Language and all! Sometimes I get depressed watching those hateful Fox puppets criticizing President Obama, and demonizing Liberals in general. Also Saying things like “Why do we even have a minimum wage? Let the Free Market decide.”

      I don’t know how average Americans can stand them! Do they really need a millionaire on TV telling them to work three jobs and live within their means and that they are NOT entitled to Social Security and Medicare?

  4. Only O’Reilly gets more and not when Stewart is on.”

    O’Reilly gets more than half of Stewart’s audience size on the rerun.
    http://www.politicususa.com/en/jon-stewart-fox-ratings

    “When Stewart and O’Reilly go head to head at 11 PM, Jon Stewart tops Bill O’Reilly’s replay by almost a million viewers (2.3 million to 1.321 million).”

  5. Mark says:
    6/20/2011 at 9:40 am
    So you’re admitting that 2/3rds of Fox’s primetime lineup are losers? OK, I’ll take that.

    If their numbers are going to lower O’Reilly’s bigger audience vs. Stewart. But O’Reilly is still more popular than Stewart so your claim that Stewart is more popular than Fox news is of course false.

  6. Great job, liontooth. Mark is usually so stuck on insult mode that he can’t debate his way out of a paper bag, as you have undoubtedly discovered. Case in point: claiming that Chris Wallace has no credibility. What a load of crap. Pot, meet kettle.

  7. Almost forgot to mention: Politifact took Stewart’s statement that “Fox’s viewers are uninformed” and labeled it FALSE.

    • And yet you have proved it to be true.

      • Taken right out of Mark’s playbook: When you can’t prove your point, just hurl a mindless insult.

        • Scott, you are embarrassing yourself (again) by repeatedly accusing me of engaging in “mindless insults.” It is obvious that I am writing in-depth analyses and responding to comments substantively. So all your comments are doing is demonstrating that your behavior is precisely what you falsely accuse me of. Notice that you have not once made a direct rebuttal of anything I’ve said here.

          Sometimes I wonder if you’re one of those paid right-wing trolls who harass lefty blogs, but, if you are, they sure aren’t getting their money’s worth.

          • “Notice that you have not once made a direct rebuttal of anything I’ve said here.”

            That’s false, as he has mentioned the Politifact refuting of Stewart’s claim.
            From Politifact’s article:
            http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/20/jon-stewart/jon-stewart-says-those-who-watch-fox-news-are-most/
            Fox actually scored better than its two direct cable-news rivals — MSNBC, which is a liberal counterpoint to Fox, and CNN, which is considered more middle-of-the-road. Also scoring lower than Fox were local television news, the evening network news shows and the network morning shows.

            And for the third time, particular Fox shows scored well. Hannity ranked fifth (just ahead of MSNBC’s liberal shows hosted by Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow) and O’Reilly ranked ninth. For the first time, Pew included Glenn Beck in its rankings, and the Fox host finished 12th — slightly ahead of Stewart’s own Daily Show.

            • You’re cherry picking your data. In much of the data reference by PolitiFact Fox indeed scored among the lowest networks. You left out PolitiFact’s conclusions that…

              1) Fox isn’t last on the list, although it’s close.
              2) Once again, Fox News as a whole ranked fairly low among regularly used media outlets.
              3) Fox clearly did the worst among the major news outlets.

              I agree that there were numbers that went the other way as well. But I think that PolitiFact misread Stewart’s comment. He said that Fox was “the most consistently misinformed.” He did not say they were the most misinformed, but that they were misinformed more often on a consistent basis. There is a difference.

              That said, I think we’ve beaten this subject to death considering it was thrown in at the end of my article and is not the main focus. Do you have any comments on the primary point that Fox is “a relentless agenda-driven 24 hour news opinion propaganda delivery system?”

  8. “It’s obvious that I am writing in-depth analysis…”

    No, it’s obvious that you are writing a whole lot of sentences that have a flourishing amount of name-calling and insults coupled with a bunch of misleading data and sentences that have been largely debunked, as liontooth and Politifact have pointed out.

  9. Mark says:
    6/21/2011 at 7:33 pm

    You left out PolitiFact’s conclusions that
    1) Fox isn’t last on the list, although it’s close.
    2) Once again, Fox News as a whole ranked fairly low among regularly used media outlets.
    3) Fox clearly did the worst among the major news outlets.

    This is what PolitiFact concluded in the third paragraph from the end:

    So we have three Pew studies that superficially rank Fox viewers low on the well-informed list, but in several of the surveys, Fox isn’t the lowest, and other general-interest media outlets — such as network news shows, network morning shows and even the other cable news networks — often score similarly low. Meanwhile, particular Fox shows — such as The O’Reilly Factor and Sean Hannity’s show — actually score consistently well, occasionally even outpacing Stewart’s own audience.

    That says nothing about Fox being close to last or being “clearly” the worst.

    He did not say they were the most misinformed, but that they were misinformed more often on a consistent basis. There is a difference.
    Stewart’s claim was that “every poll” shows this, it obviously doesn’t. Stewart’s point was Fox’s viewers are misinformed because Fox News has a bias.

    If the viewers of two of Fox’s most watched primetime shows, O’Reilly and Hannity, score “consistently well”, then viewers aren’t being misled by propaganda.

    • See the video in “Update II” posted above.

      By the way, while I don’t agree with you on several counts, I appreciate your effort to engage in the debate and support your arguments (unlike some others). You’ve even made some good points. Thanks for challenging me.

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