Stewart v. Wallace; Fair v. Unbalanced

Jon Stewart enters the Fux News snake pit

Last Sunday, Jon Stewart was interviewed by Mike Wallace on the Fox News Sunday Show. In the show’s intro (not shown in the clip above), Wallace promised to “grill the bad boy of political comedy about liberal media bias.” You know, that old canard. But it was Wallace that ended up on the BBQ spit, burnt to a crisp.

My previous impression of Chris, son of Mike of 60 Minutes fame, was that he was the least ideological of the Fuxers. Stewart even offered that Chris was a rational counterpart of Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. But it was obvious from the beginning that this Chris Wallace was on a mission from his media god, Roger Ailes (the guy who signs his paychecks) to discredit Stewart while holding up his own network as a paragon of fairness and accuracy.

Despite Stewart’s early attempts at self-deprecating humor in response to Wallace seemingly good-natured ribbing, Stewart early on sussed out Wallace’s main line of attack– the false equivalency of comparing their respective networks, Comedy Central and Fox News. Which amounts to comparing a show that takes pride in advertising itself as fake news channel with one that actively embodies it, without the required disclosures.

A minute and a half into the interview, Wallace gets down to business, insisting that Stewart read what was on the inside of his planted coffee cup– Fux News’ “Fair and Balanced” trademarked slogan. Furthermore, he insisted that Stewart actually drink from the cup, twice, the Fux logo prominently displayed for all the world to see.

Ironically, it was this cheesy little stunt that proved to be Wallace’s undoing. More on that in a moment.

Wallace proceeded to quote some of Stewart’s past criticisms of Fux News, which Stewart has called:

…a biased organization, relentlessly promoting an ideological agenda under the rubric of being a news organization…A relentless agenda-driven, 24-hour news opinion propaganda delivery system.”

Wallace, feigning amazement, asks:

WALLACE: Where do you come up with this stuff?

STEWART: It’s actually quite easy…

Of course it is, to anyone not living in the carefully constructed artificial reality of the Fux News Matrix in which every other network that doesn’t mirror their Bizzaro World narratives are, by definition, liberally biased.

[snip]

WALLACE: Well, here’s the deal. Are you willing to say the same thing about the mainstream media, about ABC, CBS, NBC, “Washington Post,” “New York Times”?

STEWART: No.

Brave little Fux News, the only truth teller in the vast mainstream media universe.

At this point in the interview, it becomes evident that the transcript provided by Fox itself has been edited,  despite its disclaimer that as of 6:06 PM PST Tuesday June 21, 2011 it is a “rush transcript” and “may not be in its final form and may be updated.”

For instance, at the 3:10 mark is Stewart’s characterization of Fox as “reactive” is missing. Another omission occurs at the 4 minute mark where Stewart has just pointed out that despite Wallace’s characterizations to the contrary, The New York Times is not “relentlessly activist” the way that Fox is.

This in turn paves the way for the most critical omission of all. Stewart first comments that MSNBC has adopted Fox’s successful business model, allowing that it  by presents an alternative, liberal, and even activist viewpoint. Then he turns the tables completely on Wallace, asking:

STEWART: … So, you believe that Fox News is exactly the ideological equivalent of MSNBC News?

WALLACE: I believe that we are the counterweight. I think they have a liberal agenda and I think we tell the other side of the story.

Oops.

“The OTHER side of the story”? What happened to its claim of presenting a neutral, fair and balanced reporting of the news? What’s happened to the famous firewall that Fux insists exists between its news and commentary divisions, an illusion shattered by Media Matters‘ publication of the infamous emails by the then Deputy Director of the Fox News division, Bill Sammon, reference to which is also omitted from the transcript, discussed in more detail below.

(Stewart would note on his own show Monday night that the overall editing job made him look a bit unhinged by mismatching his emotional reactions to the particular questions and accusations that Wallace was throwing at him.)

The interview then shifts to The New York Times’ and the Washington Post‘s treatment of the Sarah Palin emails. Wallace cited that as evidence of their supposed liberal bias because they had asked their readers to help them sort through its 24,000 pages, while not asking them to likewise with the 2,000 pages of the Affordable Care Act. Stewart dismissed the false equivalency, saying the emails were “light fluff” (compared to the much wonkier, legalistic nature of The ACA).

Stewart then goes back on the offensive, disrupting Wallace’s overarching narrative of a mythical liberal mainstream media bias, asking a rhetorical question:

STEWART:…If your suggestion is that they are relentlessly partisan, then why haven’t they gone and backed away from Weiner?

(During his day job was at the time, Anthony Weiner was actively questioning the propriety of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas‘ many conflicts of interest, including at least a million dollars worth of “donations” and other gifts to him and his wife by parties with matters before the Court. Which begs the question: Did  Weiner get the same treatment as Elliot Spitzer, who in his capacity as the New York’s Attorney General, was about to blow the whistle on the criminal conduct of the Wall Street Banksters immediately prior to the September ’08 crash?)

In contrast to Wallace’s assertion that the mainstream media is a bastion of liberal bias pushing a liberal agenda, Stewart offers his own analysis:

STEWART: The bias of the mainstream media is towards sensationalism, conflict and laziness. I wouldn’t say it was towards the liberal agenda…

Wallace then shows a clip produced by the Sarah Palin campaign featuring her recent One Woman clown show bus tour. Stewart had noted that the promo used a really cool technique where reporters complete each others sentences, wondering where he had seen it used before. Turns out it was in a herpes commercial.

WALLACE: Sarah Palin and the herpes drug, really?

STEWART: Yes, as a technique for the commercial? You know, so, you’re saying that by comparing the technique that she used in her video —

WALLACE: You are not making a political comment?

STEWART: You really think that’s a political comment?

WALLACE: Yes.

STEWART: You’re insane.

WALLACE: Really?

STEWART: Yes. Here is the difference between you and I — I’m a comedian first. My comedy is informed by an ideological background. There’s no question about that. The thing that will never understand and the thing that in some respect conservative activists will never understand is that Hollywood, yes, they’re liberal. But that’s not their primary motivating force. I’m not an activist. I’m a comedian.

After running a clip where Stewart mimics Harold Cain‘s pledge to keep things simple stupid, Wallace implies it is a racist Amos and Andy bit. Stewart, looking a bit peeved, points out that mimicry is a standard tool in the comedians toolbox and offers to demonstrate a few of his other stereotypical characters to Wallace, who instead sits their like a grinning idiot, frozen in a rictus smile of silence.

Stewart then cuts to the false equivalency chase, asking Wallace:

STEWART: Are you suggesting that you and I are the same? Are you suggesting that — what am I at my highest aspiration and what are you at your highest aspiration? Tell me.

WALLACE: I think — honestly, I think you want to be a political player.

STEWART: You are wrong. You’re dead wrong. I appreciate what you’re saying. Do I want my voice heard? Do I want my voice heard? Absolutely. That’s why I got into comedy. Am I an activist in your mind, an ideological partisan activist?

WALLACE: Yes.

STEWART: OK. Then I disagree with you.

Which takes us to the pivotal 10 minute mark where Stewart draws a bright line between himself, a comedian who makes his living parodying politicians and propagandists; and those very same politicians and propagandists who, in an increasingly transparent attempt to enforce their worldview and values on the rest of us, parody themselves.

STEWART: You can’t understand because of the world you live in that there is not a designed ideological agenda on my part to affect partisan change because that’s the soup you swim in. I appreciate that. I understand that. It reminds me of, you know — you know, [in] ideological regimes. They can’t understand that there is free media other places. Because they receive marching orders. And if you want me to go through Bill Sammon’s emails…”

Tellingly, it is at this 10:27 mark that the reference to Sammon has been omitted from the transcript. (First Principle of Propaganda Deconstruction– identify which elements have been left out and then explain how said omission undermines the narrative being presented as the truth of the matter.) But credit where credit is due, Wallace was smart enough to avoid going down that road because, beyond anything, it is Sammon’s own words that prove Emperor Rupert and his enforcer, Sheriff Ailes, wear no clothes.

As Media Matters documents, it was during the 2008 presidential election that Sammon directed his “news” people to cast Obama as a vaguely menacing, Marxist, socialist, community organizer. Quoting from an actual Sammon’s memo…

From: Sammon, Bill
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2008 1:02 PM
To: 069 -Politics; 169 -SPECIAL REPORT; 030 -Root (FoxNews.Com)
Subject: fyi: Obama’s references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists in his autobiography, “Dreams from My Father.” Plus a couple of his many self-described “racial obsessions”…

…Media Matters comments:

By that evening, the subject line of Sammon’s email had been inserted — word-for-word — into show notes written in preparation for the next morning’s Fox & Friends, which featured an appearance by Sammon.
‘
The information in Sammon’s email wasn’t exactly breaking news. He had already published essentially the same research about Obama’s 1995 memoir a year earlier in his book Meet the Next President. But Sammon, who has since been promoted to Washington managing editor, believed the “biased” media were failing to question Obama’s purported links to radicals and socialism. Sammon also believed Sen. John McCain’s campaign could gain momentum by capitalizing on those links.

For weeks, Sammon had used Fox’s airwaves to promote efforts to tie Obama to socialism. On October 14, 2008, Sammon said that Obama’s “spread the wealth” remark to Joe the Plumber “is red meat when you’re talking to conservatives and you start talking about spread the wealth around. That is tantamount to socialism.”

[…]

Sammon’s attempts to link Obama to radicalism were reflected in Fox News’ graphics. While Sammon spoke, on-air text read: “The Real Barack Obama; Aligned W/ Marxists, Socialists”; “Obama’s Radical Past; Chose Friends W/ Marxist”; “Obama’s Chosen Friends; Marxist Profs & Structural Feminists”; and “Obama’s Racial Divide; ‘Emotion B/W Races Never Be Pure.'”

Read the whole thing to better appreciate just how intertwined Fux’s purported  “straight news” and “opinion” are.

In the end, these are false constructs, conflated so as to obscure their true nature– the very kind of propaganda that Stewart rightly claims Fux spews daily.