Media v. Politics?

Jon Stewart's recent performance on Crossfire has elicited a lot of responses, most of them positive. He has tapped into a lot of discontent with the way our media responds, or doesn't respond, to the public's needs. It is very easy to get caught up in the "liberal" v. "conservative" media argument. My conservative friends swear that the media is liberal and point to Dan Rather's recent memo-gate as evidence. Lefty bloggers point to talk radio, and the fact that CNN, MSNBC and network shows, if not very kind to Bush, bend over backward to present things equally. That results with Bush and Kerry both "having problems with the truth" in the debates, where in reality Bush misled far more than Kerry. But those media outlets hate to say that, because then they are tagged with the "liberal" media charge. Brilliant, from a tactical effort by the conservatives. Evil, but brilliant.

Jon Stewart, however, lambasted both Paul Begala AND Tucker Carlson for being partisan hacks. He didn't differentiate between the two parties and said that the media wasn't doing their job. In the Rolling Stone interview (only an excerpt online) Stewart went further and said that the CNN people simply had no sense of any journalistic duty and simply repeated what they were told. I was thinking about this again the other day, and it seems that our mistake is that we assume that contest here is between the Media and the Politicos for what the Public understands. This assumes an adversarial system between Journalists and Politicians. Politicians, we assume, dissemble and mislead because that is what Politicians do. They spin and pander and do whatever to get reelected. Our mistake is assuming that the Media really operates as a different species. Perhaps our mistake is understandable. We remember (or read about) Ed Murrow taking on Joe McCarthy, or Walter Cronkite reporting that Vietnam was not going well, or think of Robert Redford as Bob Woodward serving the country well by exposing a corrupt administration.

But since then? We have seen the prominence of TV over radio, and the rise of the 24 hour news channels. This has resulted, I think, in the merging of these two classes of people. Instead of Politicians and Journalists, we just have Celebrities. Chris Matthews and Tim Russert all worry about their market value for book tours, and speaking engagements. Their concern is not really to be insightful journalists, but to be successful celebrities. Think about how easily (thanks, L, for this insight) people move back and forth between the Entertainment, Political, and Journalistic classes. Joe Scarborough leaves Congress for his own tv show. Fred Thompson hit the nationals stage in Watergate, moved from their to films (Hunt for Red October and the second Die Hard) then ran for Senate. Now he plays a DA from NY who makes statements on laws he voted on in real life. Weird. Sean Hannity does his bit on Fox then works as a voice over for the RNC video.

No one sees a contradiction with all that, yet they really expect the "media" to challenge the Pols? To be fair, there are still some real journalists out there (and I am not talking about Jon Stewart), but they are outnumbered and minimized in the new InfoPolTainment industry. I just made that up, but does anyone think it isn't real?