Koppel vs. Stewart

I did not see Jon Stewart on Nightline last Wednesday, but it sounds like I missed a war between generations:

...[Koppel's] first challenge to Stewart: "You say that [the Democratic Convention] is like a product launch." "Not like a product launch—it is a product launch," Stewart replied, and proceeded to outline his take on Kerry's nomination as the result of a year-long process of corporate branding: "John Kerry: now with lemon!" A pretty standard line of argument for those of Stewart's generation, reconciled as we are to our postmodern condition as the constant targets of marketing and spin, but to Koppel, it must have sounded like the sheerest nihilism....

...Stewart was careful to separate The Daily Show's mandate from that of "real" television journalism: "I know my role. I am the dancing monkey." But that dodge didn't satisfy his broadcast-news interlocuter: "The reality of it is—and this is no joke—there are a lot of people out there who do turn to you." "Not for news," Stewart countered, and they were off again.

What was at stake in this debate between two men, a generation apart in age (Stewart is 42, Koppel 64), both of whom host some version of a late-night daily talk show on current events? Clearly, Koppel's beef went far beyond the question of whether most folks who watch The Daily Show do so for yuks. (As a long-term viewer, I would contend that of course they do, and that anyone who can't tell the difference between Stewart's out-there satire and actual investigative reporting is too dumb to understand the "real" news anyway.) No, the battle of the network anchors was about nothing less than the future of TV journalism.

Koppel, a venerable holdout from the era of the three-network system, stands up for the beleaguered notion of an objective truth that journalists can wrest from politicians, protect from satirists, and bring to the American public. Stewart, on the other hand, finds it "dispiriting" that broadcast news has become complicit with the prespun narratives coming from both left and right: "It's Coke and Pepsi talking about beverage truth." And yet Koppel is far from naïve— he quickly concedes that the convention-as-product-launch concept is "one I'd like to steal sometime"—and Stewart is no jaded Gen-X cynic. At one point, he even encourages Koppel to use the bully pulpit of Nightline to speak truth to power: "You can say, 'That's B.S.' You don't need humor, because you have what I wish I had, which is credibility and gravitas."

Wednesday night's discussion came to an abrupt end when Stewart, who was clearly ready to go on talking, was told by a polite but brusque Koppel, "You're finished."... But I was looking forward to Round Two on Thursday, when Koppel was scheduled to be Stewart's guest on The Daily Show. Koppel never showed, and his absence went unmentioned. Last-minute scheduling snafu, or anchorman blood feud?...

Fuck Ted Koppel. I'd rather watch The Daily Show than Nightline anyday.