Jon Stewart takes up Edward R. Murrow role

Since none of the major news media will do it, a comedian had to step in, tell the truth and get the ball rolling for health care for the 9/11 responders.  We can no longer depend on journalists, other than a precious few like Seymour Hersch, to do investigative reporting and tell the people how it really is.  This is what happens when corporations rule the world.  Thank god for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who have taken the place of the Walter Cronkites and Edward R. Murrows of our past.  The rest of the so-called news reporters are controlled under an iron thumb by their papers and networks.  Shame on all those self-proclaimed "journalists" who have abdicated their real job of alerting the people with truth, no matter what the cost to themselves. Very few of their number consider truth to be a priority. 

Julian Assange has performed a service with WikiLeaks, but how many are paying attention? -- and just look at the price he is having to pay for it, exactly as Daniel Ellsberg did when he released the Pentagon Papers to the public in the 1970s. He was immediately labeled as a sexual predator, even though there was never any evidence of that nature that could ever be proven.  A barrage of lies and condemnations flew through the air against him, just as they are now against Assange. 

Many other voices are crying in the wilderness, trying to point us in the direction of truth -- the UFO field comes to mind, with so many highly placed military members and government employees bravely and truthfully reporting their own experiences, trying to alert the people to truth in the face of lies and disinformation being put out by the government to refute them.  But too few in our country's population are paying attention -- many would rather listen to lies and more lies, such as are being spewed out daily on the FOX cable network, owned and ruled by Rupert Murdoch, an idiot of the first order.  Such is the intelligence (or lack of it) in the majority of the population, who like their "news" delivered with distortion and don't mind being called "dittoheads" by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/business/media/27stewart.html?src=me&ref=general

EXCERPT: [NYC Mayor] Bloomberg, a frequent guest on “The Daily Show,” also recognized Mr. Stewart’s role.

“Success always has a thousand fathers,” the mayor said in an e-mail. “But Jon shining such a big, bright spotlight on Washington’s potentially tragic failure to put aside differences and get this done for America was, without a doubt, one of the biggest factors that led to the final agreement.”

Though he might prefer a description like “advocacy satire,” what Mr. Stewart engaged in that night — and on earlier occasions when he campaigned openly for passage of the bill — usually goes by the name “advocacy journalism.”

There have been other instances when an advocate on a television show turned around public policy almost immediately by concerted focus on an issue — but not recently, and in much different circumstances.

“The two that come instantly to mind are Murrow and Cronkite,” said Robert J. Thompson, a professor of television at Syracuse University. 

The Dec. 16 show focused on two targets. One was the Republicans who were blocking the bill; Mr. Stewart, in a clear effort to shame them for hypocrisy, accused them of belonging to “the party that turned 9/11 into a catchphrase.” The other was the broadcast networks (one of them being CBS, the former home of Mr. Murrow and Mr. Cronkite), which, he charged, had not reported on the bill for more than two months.

“Though, to be fair,” Mr. Stewart said, “it’s not every day that Beatles songs come to iTunes.” (Each of the network newscasts had covered the story of the deal between the Beatles and Apple for their music catalog.) Each network subsequently covered the progress of the bill, sometimes citing Mr. Stewart by name. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, credited Mr. Stewart with raising awareness of the Republican blockade.

Eric Ortner, a former ABC News senior producer who worked as a medic at the World Trade Center site on 9/11, expressed dismay that Mr. Stewart had been virtually alone in expressing outrage early on.