Friday, August 06, 2004
Not exactly breaking news, but
Ted Koppel complained about The Daily Show during an interview with Jon Stewart during the Democratic National Convention (full transcript of Koppel interview w/Stewart here).
I didn't see the Koppel interview, but, judging from this account in Slate, Koppel was in a bit of huff:
I doubt anyone actually watches The Daily Show to get the news. I watch it because it's usually funny as hell, and because I love the way it spoofs journalistic pomposity and the media's relentless focus on the trivial. Jon Stewart never pretends to be a journalist but he often seems to have more on the ball than the network talking heads.
But even if some people DO get their news from The Daily Show, you can hardly blame them, when they can expect garbage like this from Koppel. And stuff like this(from the incomparable Daily Howler):
|
Ted Koppel complained about The Daily Show during an interview with Jon Stewart during the Democratic National Convention (full transcript of Koppel interview w/Stewart here).
I didn't see the Koppel interview, but, judging from this account in Slate, Koppel was in a bit of huff:
From the start, Koppel made no secret of his distaste for Stewart's show: "A lot of television viewers—more, quite frankly, than I am comfortable with—get their news from […] The Daily Show."
I doubt anyone actually watches The Daily Show to get the news. I watch it because it's usually funny as hell, and because I love the way it spoofs journalistic pomposity and the media's relentless focus on the trivial. Jon Stewart never pretends to be a journalist but he often seems to have more on the ball than the network talking heads.
But even if some people DO get their news from The Daily Show, you can hardly blame them, when they can expect garbage like this from Koppel. And stuff like this(from the incomparable Daily Howler):
On October 4, 2000—one day after Bush-Gore Debate I—Ted Koppel appeared on Larry King Live. King asked Koppel about the factual disputes which drove the previous night’s session:
KING: Okay. Were you impressed with this "fuzzy [math]," top 1 percent, 1.3 trillion, 1.9 trillion bit?
King was referring to the "bit" about the size and distribution of the Bush tax cuts—the campaign’s largest budget proposal. Bush and Gore had battled about the shape of the plan—and in his charges of "phony numbers" and "fuzzy math," Bush had called Gore a Big Liar. The issues involved were stunningly basic. So try to believe that Ted said it:
KOPPEL: You know, honestly, it turns my brains to mush. I can't pretend for a minute that I'm really able to follow the argument of the debates. Parts of it, yes. Parts of it, I haven't a clue what they're talking about.
Koppel is paid millions of dollars a year. The facts about the Bush tax cuts had been clear for five months as he spoke (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/24/02). But it "turned his brains to mush," he said, to try to follow the Bush-Gore debate. In this moment, we saw the stunning insouciance of our insider press corps. In any other professional sector, a practitioner making such a startling admission would be subject to suits for misfeasance.
