Jon Stewart left the Daily Show before American talk shows became Democratic sounding boards. No wonder, in his new show for Apple TV +, The Problem With Jon Stewart, he proved to be an exception when defending Joe Rogan, on Thursday (10).
And he did so by putting himself on the scene, as for his Spotify colleague. “First of all, I know Joe. You give more nuance to those you know, you see him more three-dimensional. And we always demonize those who are strangers to us.”
Already “guilty of this bias”, declared another. “In the escalation to Iraq, I was on the side of what you would describe, in the establishment, as disinformation. I was promoting disinformation, but it showed itself a few years later.”
What makes him nervous, Stewart continued, is that he, too, could have fallen if Viacom or Comedy Central, who were producing his show at the time, had wanted him to. Although he was right against the “established” opinion, recalling one vehicle specifically:
“The New York Times mainstream view was, ‘They have weapons of mass destruction, they have these tubes that can only be used for nuclear power, Saddam is this, is that.’” The NYT was a giant purveyor of disinformation. And they didn’t have to give an account.”
The background is not Rogan and his interview with a denialist. Stewart agreed that there is, yes, to discuss in the colleague, but urged caution with the suppression of divergent approaches, given the quicksand of the news.
The US is grappling with a new escalation of war, and there are differences in approach. Not in the NYT, but journalists from other organizations, such as the Associated Press, began questioning alleged information about adversaries.
And now an “established” vehicle, the only one of the three networks still with the journalistic stature to rival the same NYT, also decided to question, submitting Joe Biden himself to a series of questions and demands that bewildered him.
Lester Holt, anchor of the main news program, Nightly News, asked, for example, if the American president had left his Russian counterpart “with no option” but to invade Ukraine. He also questioned him about inflation and Afghanistan, two other fronts that threaten the Democrats, in the November elections.
ONE MONTH TO THE VOTE
“Trusted Man,” about Donald Trump “Breaking America,” comes out in October, a month before the midterm elections, but NYT reporter Maggie Haberman provided Axios with the cover and a teaser by that he destroyed documents.
The repercussion was negative, demanding why postponing news to add to a book.
