Jon Stewart: The Cronkite Mantle

As a follow-up to my last post on Walter Cronkite and the current state of the news media in the US, I will note this post by Jason Linkins at The Huffington Post and the Time Magazine poll it references. Linkins says in part:

Well, in a result that he will probably accept as downright apocalyptic for America, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart has been selected, in an online poll conducted by Time Magazine, as America's Most Trusted Newscaster, post-Cronkite. Matched up against Brian Williams, Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, Stewart prevailed with 44 percent of the vote. Now, if we're being honest, he probably managed to prevail as the winner precisely because he was the odd man out in a field of network news anchors. Nevertheless, I think Jim Cramer should feel free to SNACK ON THAT.

This says good -- and strangely well-deserved -- things about Stewart, but again acts as another cudgel with which to beat the news media in this country about its collective head and shoulders!

22 July 2009