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Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Media v. Media
Remember the Mad Magazine SPY v. SPY cartoon? The new technology has changed that now to Media v. Media or, specifically. CNN v. the Internet. You've probably heard about the Jon Stewart/CNN Crossfire donnybrook by now. If not, here's the short story: "On Friday night, the star of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" angered his "Crossfire" hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala, saying they promote partisan political debate. The online transcript and video clips of the program immediately became an overnight sensation among Web surfers, bloggers and pundits alike."

There you have it. But not really. Seems that if you want a video transcript of the Stewart segment you can get one from CNN, of course for a fee, as soon as they can get to it and the mail deliver it. High tech, huh? Well, hey, guys, what about posting the 13 minute clip on your website? You know, streaming video or some such? Rapid transfer of information ring a bell anywhere in there? Why bother? As of midday Tuesday, online video hosting site IFilm said, more than 670,000 people had downloaded the CNN clip from its site.

That's more people than typically watch CNN's Crossfire on any given night. When will they ever learn, when will they ever really learn...?

# Permalink Posted at 7:30 AM 4 comments Email this Link

Comments on this Item:

Stewart wasn't arguing that they promote partisan debate; he was arguing that they were promoting politics as theatre and spent more time sticking to talking points than actually debating issues.

And he made fun of that damn bowtie.

For more insightful commentary from Jon Stewart, check out his interview with Bill Moyers

# posted by Paul 8:20 AM

Paul, Paul, Paul... When will you learn... First that's a quote from the news story about the download issue. Second, according to the show's transcript, Stewart said, "No, no, no, you're not too rough on them. You're part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks... It's not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery..." Yes, Stewart did mention theater as well, but I think we can give the poor reporter a pass on the "they promote partisan political debate," line based on his other statements.

As for the Moyers' interview, Alice says I can't make political statements here. The fact that alleged news people are interviewing Jon Stewart as an alleged news person tends to speak for itself. Besides, whoever did the transcript of that interview spelled "cojones" incorrectly.

# posted by Bill 9:39 AM

It's doubtful that CNN handles its own transcripts. That sort of thing is typically contracted out. As for making the clip available, half the Internet is doing so already on their own bandwidth bill -- given that, why would CNN put it up?

# posted by Anonymous 10:12 AM

Half the Internet is making it available --because CNN didn't. Get it? CNN = News Medium. Internet = Gossip Medium. Hmmm... Gossip Medium proliferating the news! One huge lost PR opportunity, not to mention traffic not going to its website.

# posted by Bill 2:45 PM

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