Let me say this about the media, these types of stories,
Ukraine, a war, this is what they're actually built for.
And when they are matched with their purpose and
there is a story equal to it, boy did they deliver.
>> So that is a brief excerpt from Jon Stewart's podcast,
the episode coming out just yesterday.
He is very impressed with the media's ability to provide information
about what's going on in Ukraine.
I think it makes for a really interesting jumping off point to a discussion.
But I wanna give Jon just a little bit more time to make the case.
So here's a bit more of the podcast.
>> And they have done a magnificent job of bringing this story,
the reality of this story to the public.
I have been wildly impressed and it just shows
you what they are capable of when a story is at the level
of urgency that they pretend everything else is.
And boy it's a little heartbreaking.
Because you see just how talented and
how committed and how involved they can be.
But when left idle or when left to the currents of
their ratings overlords, how their natural and
innate abilities are perverted into something way more damaging.
But man, I don't know if you've been watching the coverage, but
they have been on, I believe the phrase is motherfucking point.
>> So I have not consumed literally everything that Jon Stewart has said over
the past two decades.
But I believe that is the most positive commentary he has ever provided for
US based political media.
And I think that there's something to it, but I have a feeling that our panel is
going to take issue with a few parts of what was said there.
So what do you both think about this?
>> Well, I mean if you listen to the entirety of his argument,
he makes it seem as though the press is,
they really shine when it comes to war coverage.
And look, I think the jury is still out, first of all, like be specific,
this is the thing that's starting to become a pet peeve of mine.
Where media is used as if it's this monolith.
And every source is the same.
He later made,
there were some qualifiers later where he's like well not Fox news, right?
Okay well great.
I agree with him on that.
But what does he mean when he says media, what is he consuming?
Which shows is he watching?
Which publications is he reading?
So it's really hard to respond to what he's saying unless you know what he's
specifically referring to.
With that said though.
his argument basically was that, hey, this is where the media shines,
when it comes to this type of coverage and it's almost as if he has amnesia.
Did you forget when you for
a big time host on Comedy Central I think it is and
the media dropped the ball on Iraq.
The media dropped the ball in Afghanistan.
The media is dropping the ball as we speak when it comes to other
invasions that have not gotten any coverage whatsoever.
Or received very little coverage in print media, but
certainly no coverage in cable news or television news.
And look a NATO ally, a NATO country,
Turkey assisted Azerbaijan in invading Armenia.
And I'm not even talking about Nagorno-Karabakh,
I'm talking about sovereign Armenia.
Azerbaijan keeps invading, but no one cares.
No one in the media reports on that.
The treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government,
you don't see much coverage of that.
And if you do see coverage, it's a lot of apology for
the Israeli government, which is disheartening to say the least, right?
So I I just think his argument maybe it was a spontaneous argument where he
didn't give himself time to really think about what he was about to say.
But I disagree with him, while the coverage of Ukraine might be okay
depending on which sources we are referring to here.
I think that the mainstream press overall has dropped the ball when it comes
to anything involving foreign policy or international relations.
>> I agree with that.
And one of the main reasons I agree with that is because, well,
first of all, when Jon Stewart is talking about the media,
I'm assuming he's talking about the corporate media.
Which we all know in this country dominates viewership and dominates most of
the channels and mechanisms by which we can access news stories.
And The Young Turks and Democracy Now and
some of the other networks I pay attention to are notable exceptions to that.
We also know, and this has been shown empirically and media studies,
scholars have shown this when of course many media can be found online.
That the stories that media, at least for profit media or click bait media or
media that needs traffic.
Media sources that need traffic tend to be based on the manufacturing of
consent, right?
That's Noam Chomsky's book from over 30 years ago.
And what do I mean by that?
It covers the stories based on the agendas of those in power.
And that resonates well with the point you just made about why we don't hear about
anything going on in Yemen.
Or the comments are made during the break about an ongoing war in
Somalia where the United States has a military presence.
Including in many other countries in the world.
I myself during this last week of this invasion and this war in Ukraine,
I have been trying to triangulate where I get my media sources from.
Been watching Al-Jazeera, been watching France 24,
I was telling you about that earlier, Jon.
But at the same time, I think what's really absent are many different stories
as we talked about before.
That really can help us understand why what's occurring is occurring.
How do we try to understand the Russian states agendas?
How do we understand the Russian people and their suffering amidst this all?
How we can understand how African people, for example,
in Ukraine have been discriminated against through this process.
So there's a lot of depth.
There's a sort of multilateral sort of set of questions
associated with even this Ukraine Russia story that are taken out.
They're filtered out of the American media because right now we've re simplified
things, Ukraine hero, Russia bad.
But what about the people from both?
What about the history?
All of these questions are missing.
So there's no, and I think you can make media that is entertaining and
informative and fun to watch that actually can show some of that depth.
>> I disagree in part not necessarily with the points that you're making.
I think that the points you're making both of you, I mean are entirely accurate.
I think though there are more specifically accurate critiques of the media
perhaps than of the case that that he's making.
Because I think kind of inherent to what he's saying is, he and
bearing in mind that there are definitely aspects of their leaving out.
That they're doing a better job now, which seems to necessitate the understanding
that in these other conflicts they haven't.
That on these other topics they don't, look I think a generous read of of what
he's saying would be look at what they can do with their resources and manpower.
People know all about things that are happening in Ukraine.
What if they sent their reporters to Yemen and embedded them there.
What if they were in Ethiopia?
What if they were doing all these things?
They can supply tons of information.
They have the manpower, they have the understanding,
they know how to frame things to make them interesting.
What if outside of the context of war, what if they took this media apparatus,
this machine that they have, and turned to the issue of income inequality.
And had reporters on the ground talking to people suffering through our economic
system.
I might be reading a little bit too much into what he's saying to assume that
that's the generalized critique he's making.
But I think what he's saying is, in the same way that they can put
like a 24-hour day focus on a stranded cruise ship.
And really focus on it, provide a lot of information, but
that's generally a waste of time.
That's an issue, but it's not one of the largest issues.
They can clearly do that as they're mostly doing with Ukraine.
Bearing in mind, again, they're missing some angles and even the coverage they're
doing and maybe he gets into this in the full podcast has a lot of slip ups,
we've acknowledged few.
I wanna show you one more here.
>> Rumors of a thermobaric bomb which is sort of vacuum bomb,
which to be fair the US has used before in Afghanistan.
But the idea of being used in Europe is stomach churning.
>> So that's the sort of thing.
It is good to acknowledge that we've used thermobaric weapons,
we've used cluster bombs.
But when you then immediately say my God, but now in Europe,
no there my God, Afghanistan, my God in Syria, my God in Iraq.
There's an attempt to provide that understanding but
the media is still catching up to the biases they went into this conflict with.
>> Absolutely, because the story of Somalia or Yemen is an American story.
Because of all of the American relationships to everything that's going
on from weapons sales to the coddling with the Saudis and so on.
So every story that is global in scope because of American militarism and
imperialism, neo imperialism abroad is partly an American story.
So it's really about what do you choose to cover and
from whose voices you choose to cover it.
>> Totally, I agree with you on that and
just to respond to that last video that we played.
I mean, it shows you why the double standard exists in terms of coverage,
right?
It's this weird superiority complex that the United States and
the West overall has.
And it's this idea that, well,
I mean an attack on one of our own is a really big deal.
But any coverage of what the US is doing in Yemen or Somalia,
I mean no biggie, who cares?
I mean, the lack of attention on those issues is really, it's beyond depressing.
I think that it's journalistic negligence, but
it also goes to one point that he made, Jon Stewart made that I do agree with.
And it's the fact that we have corporate media where at the end of the day,
what is the real objective?
Profits, there used to be a time in the country where if you are broadcasting
on the airwaves you have to abide by the fairness doctrine.
You have to abide by certain regulations that ensure that if you're sharing
a story, you provide an opportunity for the other side to make their case or
to defend themselves.
And there was a lot more fairness in the media when we had those
regulations in place.
Now, they were weakened by Republican administrations.
And by the time we got to the Reagan administration,
it was essentially repealed.
And we feel the ramifications of that,
when you have media that is driven by a profit motive.
And I can just say it's like the ep of this show.
It's incredibly difficult to ensure that we have a show that is financially
sustainable.
While also covering the stories that we care about,
the stories that are important.
It is a constant balancing act.
It's incredibly difficult to do it.
And we've managed to make it work.
But as you guys can notice,
we're not a massive corporation where our hosts are making millions of dollars.
But I'll take that trade off.
I think if you're genuinely concerned with journalism,
you shouldn't be expected to enter this job market to make millions of dollars.
You should be doing it because you actually care about informing people about
what's really going on, not just in this country but in the world.
>> I appreciate that and I appreciate you all very much.
Which is why I love being here.
And I guess I just wanna say the reason why I want, I I think it's so
important that we understand we Americans understand our own relationship to all of
these struggles.
And these negative stories and and issues around the world is not so
we can feel guilty or negative about ourselves.
It's so that we can understand how to make the world more humane.
>> My hope is I know we're still very much in the thick of this conflict, but
that coming out of it the media can remember some of the lessons they
seem to be getting.
Like how hey, we should feel bad for refugees.
Maybe we could do that going forward.
Maybe wars of aggression are bad.
Maybe we should care about the weapons that are used.
Maybe we should care more about civilian deaths.
I hope that they'll remember that when it's no longer white people that are on
the receiving end of this.
As bad as it is right now,
there's gonna be a lot of conflicts over the next 100 years.