Peoria Pundit

Remember how the Peoria Journal Star quoted a bunch of politicians and political scientists complaining that the bloggers are obsessed with dredging up old quotes to make people look bad, thus providing a disincentive to participate in the process. Well, I wouldn’t include The Daily Show with Jon Stewart among the digital media, but they’ve got the right idea:

So here’s Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq four years ago, describing the situation in a TV interview in September 2003: “We’re not in a quagmire,” he’s saying confidently. “The progress is unbelievable.”

So what about that progress, general? Because here’s Sanchez, now retired, talking about Iraq in a video clip from last October: “There has been a glaring, unfortunate display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders. . . . There’s no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight.”

The before-and-after videos didn’t air on CNN or MSNBC or ABC. Instead, the revealing sound bites ran back to back on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” The satiric Comedy Central program regularly unearths telling footage ignored or overlooked by the real news guys.

The trouble with the “real news guys” is that they deeply into a symbiotic relationship with the politicians they are supposed to be watching over on our behalf. Media organizations — and individual members of the media — have their own agendas, whether they reveal them or not. Sometimes they need to NOT piss off the people they are covering, so punches are pulled. Sometimes, they are so busy feeding the monster with sound and words, they can’t see the whole story.

But Comedy Central’s only real goal is get a laugh, at anyone’s expense. But I’m not going to discount the legitimate role satire and ridicule play in politics. Sometimes we’re laughing through the pain.

Good on Stewart and his show for getting it right. Letting the public know they are being lied to is not being negative. It’s as essential role of journalism.

Hat tip: Andrew Cline.