The Daily Stewart This Week
On Jon Stewart’s Monday hosting of The Daily Show, it was not surprising that his Main Story was about the Wall Street Journal’s article about the Trump letter – and it was not surprising that he led off first by hinting at Stephen Colbert’s firing and held that off until later. Equally unsurprising is that both segments were superb. The first about Trump was insightful but very funny. The second, on Colbert, was funny, but mostly blistering – with a slam-bang finish.
That said, his interview afterwards with Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times was absolutely horrible -- and I will not be posting here. It was one of the most surprisingly awful interviews I’ve seen Jon Stewart handle.
I had no intention of watching it, since I’ve written at length here (and here and here) about how Soon-Shiong has been destroying the Los Angeles Times, however I did fast-forward through it and stop periodically to see how Stewart was addressing it…but he not only was not addressing it well – but at all. Not a word. Not a single word. Instead, he just focused on Dr. Soon-Shiong’s admirable career in science. But nothing about him and ruining the Los Angeles Times. Nothing about how he had tried to get a position in Trump’s first administration, or about how he blocked the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris, or how when Trump won the election he wrote that “the American people had spoken” – ignoring that his paper specifically and directly serves Los Angeles and California whose people had also spoken and were ignored by the Times, or how he said it was crazy that California “doesn’t elect leaders with competence” yet supports a someone with dementia. Nothing, too, about how the head of the Editorial Board quit, he fired most of the Editorial Board, and the remaining few finally quit. Nothing about how staff had quit, and subscribers had cancelled. And much more. Jon Stewart brought up nothing about that.
And when he did ask about whether Dr. Soon-Shiong thought there was a conflict interest between what the paper wrote and the medical enterprises and patents – which Soon-Shiong dismissed with how the news division is separate – and Jon Stewart, one of the toughest interviewers who pushes back hard, accepted that and moved on. Nothing questioning coverage, nothing about a conflict on the editorial side which Soon-Shiong has imposed himself. And at the end, the publisher made a big, flag-waving statement about all that American is about, and Stewart just let it end on that. And it was awful.
Thankfully, the Main Story and his addressing the Colbert firing were superb. This is longer than most of the Daily Show videos, since it covers both.
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