NewsBusters has previously reported that Jon Stewart, the comedian, dedicated an entire episode on his Apple TV show. Jon Stewart’s Problem to how the media overplayed their hand with the Mueller report and filled their coverage with “bulls***,” and effectively turned it into a “noose-tightened, closed-walled, family-style jail-gasm.” But there was more to the show as he brought on media insiders to discuss the problem and surprisingly sat down with former Disney CEO and ABC News boss, Bob Iger.
“The reason why I chose the Mueller Report to kind of do the autopsy on was they talked a lot about The Mueller Report’s disappointment. But that disappointment was the fruit of the seed that they planted…” he deduced as he brought on his panel of former Fox Newer Chris Stirewalt, Sean McLaughlin of EW Scripps, and former CNNer Soledad O’Brien,
Stirewalt identified the root problem immediately as an inequitable incentive structure resulting from the outdated rating system. “That’s the problem. The death knell is if your numbers go down, that’s why we only get one story at a time,”He said.
O’Brien agreed and blew Stewart’s mind when she informed him that major media networks have access to a “minute-by-minute” breakdown of their ratings almost in real-time and they were instrumental in determining what to air (click “expand”):
O’BRIEN: So, as long as the delta, the ratings increase from yesterday keeps going, you’re gonna obviously keep doing that story, but you’ve got to milk it a little bit more. It’s a printout of the minute-by-60-minute ratings. You know exactly –
STEWART: Get a CNN minute-by-minute rating printout.!
O’BREIN: Everywhere, not just at CNN and it’s called the minute-by-minutes. It’s easy to know. You will be able to tell which story you were in as the ratings increased and what story it was. We lost many people at the end, however that may have been. That should never happen again.
STEWART: Will they say it clearly?
O’BRIEN: Yeah.
Stewart then put all the pieces together to create that “basically what the news is saying to us is, ‘this isn’t our fault, it’s your fault.’” Adding: “They are outsourcing the responsibility of news gathering and news telling to, ‘well, if they would watch better stuff, we’d show them that.’”
The man seemed shocked and suggested that Comedy Central, an entertainment channel, was experiencing something similar to what he was seeing. The Daily Show. “[W]e developed the thing that we believed in and the audience showed up rather than doing research on what the audience wanted and backing into it,” he explained.
At one point, when they were talking about no one wanting to buck the lucrative system they set up, O’Brien seemed to give a tacit admission that she bugged out after she got hers:
I think it’s about systems like, ‘well listen I’m in the system and this is how the system is and if I would like to get paid – continue to be paid the money that I’m making, which is seriously good money. Do I really want to fight the system?’
As the panels transitioned to Iger’s interview, there was an excerpt of the production meeting, where Stewart tells the group that he has been exacerbated. “We’re not going to have an interview with somebody who runs a news division or used to run a news division.”
Stewart seemed very upset that not one of them would talk to Stewart on the recording. “You’re an industry that relies on transparency and access and ‘democracy dies in darkness’ and you’re saying that locked in a fucking closet with the lights out and you won’t say it on camera,” he decried.
Participants in the discussion ridiculed the media for their indignation and heartlessness when covering a story.
STEWART: These are people that stand outside of people’s homes after their child has been murdered and say, “talk to me, come out–”
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: “You owe us!”
STEWART: “ –and tell us how you feel.” And they act like they owe them. Then you ask them to defend their business model.
CHELSEA (head writer): Have you tried going outside their house and been like, “fucking talk to us!”
And that’s where the interview with Iger immediately picked up. “Do you have an idea of why they might be so reluctant to speak publicly,” Stewart wondered. It was news agencies, Iger said. “being criticized in a way that they’ve never experienced before” and they’ve formed “a bit of a bunker mentality[.]”
Things got a bit tense when Stewarts was pressing Iger on how ratings drive what’s being shown to viewers and Iger was very defensive (click “expand”):
IGER I’m sure that’s the case.
STEWART – I am not referring to instances. I’m saying that’s been shaping –
It’s something you think is a common thing.
START: But not in the correct way.
IGER: Not being — see that’s, that’s I would, I would argue that there are stories that are not told because there’s a belief that people aren’t interested them. I don’t think there are stories that are told that are told inaccurately just to make them more interesting to people—
STEWART: It’s not inaccurate.
IGER – I’m defending an organization as opposed to news in general. I just don’t have enough—
STEWART It’s now somewhere in between Congress and herpes.
Iger came to understand that Stewart’s point was valid when Stewart pointed out that any newscast, no matter its basic format, is biased. “[T]he first thing you say at the top of every broadcast is, ‘our top story tonight.’ That’s opinion. It’s subjective,” Stewart argued.
And to drive that point home, Stewart brought things back to the coverage of the Mueller report and how “they created a television show” out of it. “They created the O.J. The Mueller report was used to create the O.J. That business model, it feels like, overwhelms whatever journalistic credibility exists,”Iger was told by he.
Iger was somewhat rattled by the reality of this, he said. “many news organizations feeling embattled by that Trump and the Trump era reacted to it. Um, perhaps by building up his potential demise” and felt “glee.”
He and Stewart would go on to talk about the possibility of creating a news organization that lives up to the ideals, but Iger wasn’t sure how successful it would be in terms of both financial viability and impact on the world.
Click here to view the transcription.
About Post Author
