Stewart on O'Reilly, Unedited: Worth the 42 Minutes

When O’Reilly said that saying people don’t know his show is opinion is like saying people don’t know the Daily Show is comedy, I can’t believe Jon Stewart didn’t come back with, “Except that the name of your network is Fox *News*, and I’m on *Comedy* Central.”

I agree, it’s very worth the 45 minutes of your time to watch. I wish this would get as much attention as Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire a few years back. It’s a great example of how two people on either end(ish) of the political spectrum can have a calm, intelligent discussion about their respective positions like adults. I think that Stewart is right that Bill O actually does like him. Bill seems to respect him more than he’d willing say in front of a camera. At first I thought that Bill’s comments about TDS’s audience being a bunch of stoned college kids was an attempt to piss Stewart off but I kinda think that he may have just been having some fun with him. Bill O might have a dry wit that I was previously unaware of :-)

Thanks for turning me on to this James. It was absolutely worth the 42 minutes.

The subtle little *Sswhips* at the end of certain words takes practice.

I am a Moderate Democrat and I don’t like Glenn Beck or Fox and Friends. However, I will take Bill O’Reilly over Keith Olbermann any day, though I agree with Olberman’s views more than O’Reilly’s. Olbermann only has guests on his show who agree with him. Countdown is just a Keith Olbermann talking points echo chamber. O’Reilly is not afraid to have people on his show who do not agree with him – people like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher.

What about MSNBC with it’s lineup of Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and Rachel Maddow and other commentator? It amazes me how critical some are of Fox when they remain absolutely silent about MSNBC. Much of what passes for reporting at MSNBC is partisan commentary.

Other media tends to lean to the left. Fox is the one network which presents a conservative viewpoint and it is called biased.

In response to researcher297, part of the difference is that Fox advertises itself as “fair and balanced”, while MSNBC makes no secret of its leanings. And if you think “other media” tends to lean to the left, it’s only because you’re looking at it from a right wing viewpoint – to you, anything that’s not well to the right of center “leans left.”

MSNBC starts conservative in the morning with Scarborough, reports regular news throughout the day until Ed what’s his name hits the air at 5(?). CNN used to be all over the place but they’re probably the most centrist since Dobbs left at least. You can argue that the other channels lean left but none of them are as organized and coordinated in their viewpoint as Fox is. I tend to think of the other channels as left leaning *compared to FOX*. Maybe that’s because the facts have a tendency to lean to the left of Fox and the Republican party too.

The idea that CNN “leans left” is laughable. CNN is the prime peddler of the center-right conventional wisdom of Teh Village. I don’t know how the individuals on that network vote, but in their professional product there is perhaps no better example of the near-pathological terror our political media have of being accused of the dread “liberal bias”.
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I was glad to see Stewart mention that moment when the Fox anchor who has a degree from Stanford and studied at Oxford pretended she had to “look up” and “google” the word czar– her hammy pop-eyed mugging about how “surprised she was to learn that czar meant ‘king’!” It really drove home the sheer, cynical contempt that Fox has for their own audience.

Do you ever get up early enough to watch the Gingrichite ex-congressman Joe Scarborough, who made his political bones defending a rightwing terrorist, pro bono? Or his sidekick Mika Breczinski, who has in the past year declared that Sarah Palin speaks for “real Americans”, and that racist Nazi-sympathizer Pat Buchanan is her favorite pundit because he “says what the rest of us are thinking”? Who, exactly, on Fox corresponds to these two MSNBC ‘liberals’?

Just got around to watching this interview, and I’m so glad I did. I really hope more people watch this and talk about it. Stewart presented such a nuanced perspective on every single issue O’Reilly brought up, and I was pleasantly surprised to see Bill give him more time to make his points than he usually gives other guests.
My favorite non-political part of the interview was hearing folks offstage occasionally crack up at Stewart’s joke.

I’m glad you posted the youtube link, because man, I just could not take that all in one sitting.
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Bill O’Reilly is too loathsome of an individual for me to take for more than three minutes at a time.

I just watched a lengthy 7 minute video from Fox News where Fox News host Meghan Kelly interviewed Gloria Allred at great length about the Tim Tebow ad scheduled for the Super Bowl. Gloria had plenty of time to express her views on the ad — in fact, Kelly gave her much more time than she gave Jim Daly of Focus on the Family to respond. Fox News does interview people with differing views on this and other controversial issues. MSNBC has a conservative commentator (Joe Scarborough) but not in prime time (he used to be on the evening but then was replaced by Rachel Maddow, a sort of female clone of Keith Olbermann. The fact is, Fox News is no less fair and balanced than MSNBC.

Numerous content analyses of media shows that they have a liberal bias. Studies of reporters show that they are overwhelmingly Democrats and overwhelmingly oppose conservative politicians and viewpoints . If one watches carefully (1) what is covered (2) what is not covered or not said (3) the perspective of interviewers, it becomes quite clear that the media leans to the left. One major example comes to mind: when speaking of conservative organizations or politicians, most media label them “right-wing” or even hate groups. It is rare to see a liberal or leftist radical organization called a left wing organization. They are generally referred to as liberal. By using the label right wing for conservative organizations, they are demonizing these organizations and politicians and attempting to frighten people and discourage them from critically thinking about the issues. In an e-mail I received from Emily’s List asking me to sign a petition to urge CBS not to allow the airing of the Tebow ad, they used the phrase “right wing” at least five times in a short paragraph to refer to Focus on the Family. This was their attempt to demonize this conservative Christian organization (a more accurate and less inflammatory label for the organization). How often do you hear NARAL or Planned Parenthood referred to as left wing organizations? Virtually never. Maybe they’ll be called liberal but never left wing. This is just one example of media bias to the left.

researcher297- I can’t say that your post was all that compelling. First of all, while reporters may vote for Democrats (links to such information would be nice), that does not in and of itself mean that they let their predilections color their coverage. The owners of the media outlets have much more control over what does or doesn’t get reported, and those owners overwhelmingly favor whoever can further their business interests (see http://www.whoownsthenews.com/, for example).
In regards to your specific example, Emily’s list is a (liberal) activist group, so their labeling of FotF as “right wing” is hardly an indictment of CBS or the media in general. In fact, you’ve gone to some length to show the opposite bias- after all, the FotF spot did air. How many NARAL etc. ads did you see during the Super Bowl? If these groups don’t get any airtime, how do you expect them to be labelled ‘left wing’?

You mean Stewart didn’t call out MSNBC and their biases? I’m shocked! Stewart is part of the left wing political establishment which Fox and talk radio commentators try to counterbalance.