El Periodismo de Jon Stewart

Tal como muchas de las ramificaciones y plataformas tadicionales del periodismo hoy están en revisión (algunas incluso en tela de juicio, como la manera de medir los cánones éticos), el concepto de noticia y la forma en que esta se expresa también. El mejor ejemplo es The Daily Show. El programa de TV de Jon Stewart que hace de las noticias una comedia, que recurre a la ironía para analizar la actualidad y que en el fondo destruye por completo el concepto de objetividad. Si es que ya no estaba, al menos, herido de gravedad. La discusión no es simple, pero el Stewart del rating ha pasado a ser parte del análisis universitario y de instituciones que siguen de cerca como la profesión muta y pierde, en parte, sus pilares fundamentales. The Daily Show no sólo satiriza la política y los medios de comunicación, además deja en evidencia una agenda pública muy importante y atractiva, pero que queda fuera de los medios tradicionales. En ese sentido la discusión se abre aún más. Es complejo presentar a Stewart como un referente del periodismo que deseamos, pero sería un error mayor no mirarlo de cerca. ¿Es el programa de Stewart un referente para los nuevos medios? Probablemente nos gustaría decir que no, pero lo más probable que las audiencias digan lo contrario.

Por Rachel Smolkin
www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4329

When Hub Brown's students first told him they loved "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and sometimes even relied on it for news, he was, as any responsible journalism professor would be, appalled. Now he's a "Daily Show" convert.

"There are days when I watch 'The Daily Show,' and I kind of chuckle. There are days when I laugh out loud. There are days when I stand up and point to the TV and say, 'You're damn right!'" says Brown, chair of the communications department at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and an associate professor of broadcast journalism.
Brown, who had dismissed the faux news show as silly riffing, got hooked during the early days of the war in Iraq, when he felt most of the mainstream media were swallowing the administration's spin rather than challenging it. Not "The Daily Show," which had no qualms about second-guessing the nation's leaders. "The stock-in-trade of 'The Daily Show' is hypocrisy, exposing hypocrisy. And nobody else has the guts to do it," Brown says. "They really know how to crystallize an issue on all sides, see the silliness everywhere."

Whether lampooning President Bush's disastrous Iraq policies or mocking "real" reporters for their credulity, Stewart and his team often seem to steer closer to the truth than traditional journalists. The "Daily Show" satirizes spin, punctures pretense and belittles bombast. When a video clip reveals a politician's backpedaling, verbal contortions or mindless prattle, Stewart can state the obvious--ridiculing such blather as it deserves to be ridiculed--or remain silent but speak volumes merely by arching an eyebrow.

Stewart and his fake correspondents are freed from the media's preoccupation with balance, the fixation with fairness. They have no obligation to deliver the day's most important news, if that news is too depressing, too complicated or too boring. Their sole allegiance is to comedy.