In just a few days, your sixteen year long moment of zen will come to an end. Jon Stewart will sign off the Daily Show one last time, then the latest most trusted man in America will be gone.
When I was a kid, the most trusted guy in the country was the legendary newsman Walter Cronkite. The national news came on at 6:30 for a half hour every evening on the 3 networks. PBS didn't have a news show. There were no cable or satellite networks. We had cable, but that was because we were too far by mountains to receive broadcasts from the towns with tv stations. CBS, ABC, NBC and KET were your choices.
When Uncle Walter read the news you could bank on it. It was straight as moonshine. So were Huntley, Brinkley, Reynolds and most of the rest in those days. But Cronkite was the truth smoking a pipe.
After Cronkite retired, the nightly news kept broadcasting. But it was a long time before anyone got tagged "most trusted man in America" again.
Definitely not in politics or news. Ronnie Raygun, the actor who once played POTUS, changed media ownership rules and ended the FCC Fairness Doctrine. That was the one that said any opinion offered on broadcast channels had to come with a counter opinion. The idea was to keep as much opinion as possible off the airwaves. Brainwashing was once an idea Americans didn't care for.
Cable brought 24 hour news channels who quickly became mouthpieces for special interests and political parties, two sources as trustworthy as your meth making second cousin.
Where once media outlets were independently owned, from newspapers to local TV and radio who might be affiliated with a national network, now only 5 corporations control 90% of all print, radio, television, and internet media. In 1983, it was 50 corporations.
What does it say about America that in only thirty years we went from trusting a reporter who read the news to only trusting a comedian who read the fake news? Kind of makes my head explode. But it says a couple of things to me.
One thing is there's not a trustworthy mainstream journalist or politician out there. But that's kind of obvious. The other thing is a little more subtle.
It might say that the media explosion brought by cable in the 80's and internet in the 90s and milenium has been something less than healthy for our country. Which, if you've been paying attention, is at the core of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The running primary targets in his news reading have always been misinformation and speculation.
This comes across as liberal to many with monochrome vision, since most of the misinformation and speculation come from the right. But not all. Stewart always reveled in pointing out the absurdities from the blue end of the spectrum.
Which is why he was that guy. That guy that the majority of Americans trusted. Once it was the guy who read the news. For a while it's been the guy who called out the baloney masquerading as news. The Daily Show will roll on, but who's going to get the trust now?