Jon Stewart ‘Most Trusted Man’? Donald Trump Proves Otherwise
Jon Stewart was recently named the “most trusted man in news” in a fluff piece from the Washington Post, which you can watch here.
While that may very well be true in a sense, the bar — “in news” — hasn’t been set terribly high as most Americans distrust the news media and see it as “taking sides” between Republicans (Fox News) and Democrats (everyone else).
If you think that’s an empty statement — touted by anti-media people like Donald Trump in a recent interview with Anderson Cooper — you’re wrong.
There is evidence to back it up as recently as June 2014. In the 10-year period from 1994 to 2014, Gallup reports, trust toppled in newspapers from around 30 percent to 19 percent.
Television news fared poorly as well, going from around 35 percent to 18 percent in the same period of time. Internet news started low at 21 percent in 2000 and declined to 18 percent as of 2014.
Also, consider the fact that Jon Stewart railed pretty heavily against Donald Trump — a “birther” who believes that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya — in his last days of The Daily Show, and Trump’s polling has done nothing but improve since.
All this adds up to one basic reality: Jon Stewart was the “most trusted man” in a field that commanded less than 20 percent confidence from the American people.
His commitment to trashing conservatives and going light on liberals made him part of the very thing he claimed to loathe.
In the eyes of voters — particularly 45 percent of voters who are currently stumping for Trump, a number that has risen steadily since the real estate magnate announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination — Stewart is just another talking head pushing an agenda.
In the interview below, Trump’s words have been exemplary of what most right-leaning and centrist voters have suspected for some time. The media no longer does its job. It targets some scandals, ignores others, and pushes for a narrative of misinformation and political correctness.
While Jon Stewart wasn’t always politically correct, he did pick his battles while trying to act as an advocate for responsible journalism through the gift of satire. The problem with that: satire isn’t as effective when it picks and chooses the incompetence it singles out. The satirist becomes the hypocrite when he refuses to look in a mirror.
No wonder a reality star and birther, who had virtually no chance of being taken seriously in the race for president, is now six points behind Hillary Clinton.
https://youtu.be/114cA3Bm1SA
Don’t like it? Blame Jon Stewart and the rest of his herd.
[Image of Jon Stewart via The Daily Show c/o The Boston Herald]
