Jon Stewart wonders why O’Reilly’s war lie is the story
Jo Stewart showed a great irony with the current state of reporting by the traditional mainstream media. Why this is not immediately obvious to reporters and producers is concerning.
Jon Stewart started the skit by playing clips of the media reporting on the controversy about Bill O’Reilly‘s claim of being a war correspondent in Argentina. Jon Stewart was taken aback that the media would concentrate on Bill O’Reilly’s embellishment of his ‘war career. Why would the media concentrate on an embellishment? Why not concentrate on the daily lies he tells to his audience about things that matter.
“Misrepresenting the zone he is in is kind of his hook,” said Jon Stewart. “You are in the no spin zone are the words he utters right before throwing some jackass who disproves Global Warming by wandering around Boston pointing at snow on a network whose slogan (Fair & Balanced) is a textbook case of trolling. No one is watching them for the actual truth. You are basically putting in a tremendous amount of work to say the emperor has no clothes. When the emperor has spent like 20 years going, ‘Look at my d!ck. I am naked.'”
Jon Stewart then used clips of the ‘he said she said’ response from news correspondents to show a level of immaturity and irresponsibility that one finds at the core from those who give us the news. It did little to preserve the credibility of the media.
Stewart then show a clip of VA Secretary Robert McDonald lying about the unit he served with as a manner of reaching out to a homeless veteran. The media ran with that story as well. The most probing question Stewart asked should give us pause. Why is an inconsequential fib to reach out to a homeless veteran be the story? Shouldn’t the story be that a Special Forces veteran is homeless in the rich country? On Bill O’Reilly, shouldn’t the story be that he lies to his audience on a daily basis and as such is responsible for millions of Americans being misinformed?
Stewart then showed many stories of consequence that somehow fell through the cracks specifically because the media concentrated on the superficial instead of the real story. This is the state of much of our traditional mainstream media.