The Frames, The Frames, Boss! Howie Kurtz And Jon Stewart on Iraq War Coverage

We're going to have to respectfully disagree with Gawker's Maggie Shayerson on this one — we don't think Jon Stewart hates Howie Kurtz or his book, Reality Show, Or Why The Network Anchors Are Very, Very, Very, Very Important. He may not think Kurtz has the most recognizable name for his audience — hence the joke about him having invented the word "curtsy" to go for a laugh where there might not be familiarity-spurred applause — but on balance the segment, which ran on Thursday night, didn't seem at all personal. It's below, in its entirety, so you can decide for yourself; we're just going to take a moment to highlight a few nuggets.

For someone familiar with the book and the narrative it was largely a primer — aging audience, material skews older with health segments on the back end, hemorrhaging audience share. The main point explored here was how the three evening newscasts - still the news outlet with "the biggest megaphone," according to Howie - helped turn public opinion against the war. It seemed sort of odd to me that Jon Stewart would wonder why data needed framing — that is what he does every night, presents his killer gotcha clips side by side or a current headline in context with something on C-SPAN from a year ago — and sort of odd that he would wonder "why wouldn't you report on" things like Iraqi coffinmakers not being able to keep up with demand — it's not like NBC News or whatever got a press release from Iraqi coffinmakers, it's an angle they looked into and pursued for a story, to give texture and context to the war. So that didn't seem so much combative as a tad naive, or possibly a set-up for Kurtz to explain it to his audience. Here's the clip:

Shnayerson says that Stewart damns Kurtz with faint praise by calling his book "interesting"; he may have done but at the end of the clip he also says plainly "it's a great book." As if he read it, but even so, he did say it. For the record! As for whether the two media critics locked horns, well, they did — but alas, not on screen. According to Kurtz on his new promo-blog (and corroborated by a commenter on the Gawk post), Stewart stepped it up near the end of the interview — "debating me more forcefully," said Kurtz and "demanding to know why the networks can't provide 'the truth' and whether they pull their punches to maintain access to the powerful." (The Gawker commenter said " the two definately [sic] went after each other.") Would have been interesting to see; I will say that it's sort of odd to conceive that as an adversarial exchange given that Kurtz isn't so much advancing a point of view as attempting to render a key era in a specific industry. It's a shame they didn't run that part, though, sounds like it was quite a bit more interesting. Also a shame: Where the hell was Brian Williams' giant head? It would have been rather hilarious to see Kurtz's reaction to that.

A final point: I was surprised when Jon said, "I can't imagine that they are cognitively playing to older people...'I don't know that they are gonna get that reference'" — that seems to be precisely what happens, and my own experience has borne that out (regarding a segment for CBS, recounted here). Obviously that isn't necessarily, or always, a decisive factor — Kurtz's book bears that out in his numerous delineations of the decision process— but still, clearly it does play into it.

Howard Kurtz Has No Idea Jon Stewart Hates Him [Gawker]

*With apologies to Herve Villachez.

Comments

[uj]

09:04 PM on 10/13/2007

I think the perception that Kurtz had a bad interview was more because he seemed to be less analyzing the media and more acquitting them of any wrongdoing in the run-up to Iraq.

Kurtz seems to twist the endless drumbeat of bad news from Iraq into the anchors telling it like it is. It's because Iraq is such a disaster that they only have a disaster to report. It wasn't the valiant anchors in search of the truth who put the bad news on screen, it was the colossal f**k up in Iraq that filled the screen with bad news.

It seems to me that Kurtz has split a few hairs in search of some, ANY, defense of his beloved industry, an industry that has been so clearly revealed as cowardly fellow travelers of the incompetent Bush administration.

The only reason he appears to have had a bad interview is because The Daily Show is a very different venue than Reliable Sources, where young journalist sharks fawn over the anachronist host in hopes of catching a few minutes of precious Saturday morning airtime. When he talks to people who don't need Brian Williams to tell them the war is bad, the interview comes out much different.