WaPo’s Howard Kurtz attended a breakfast at the University of Denver during which Daily Show host Jon Stewart called FNC’s “fair and balanced” slogan an insult “to people with brains.”
“I’m stunned to see Karl Rove on a news network as an analyst,” said Stewart, adding only “Fox News Sunday” moderator Chris Wallace “saves that network from slapping on a bumper sticker…Barack Obama could cure cancer and they’d figure out a way to frame it as an economic disaster.”
A Fox News spokesman responds, “Jon’s clearly out of touch,” citing last week’s Pew Research Center study showing the network has the most balanced audience in cable news: 39% Republicans and 33% Democrats. “But being out of touch with mainstream America is nothing new to Jon, as evidenced by the crash-and-burn ratings of this year’s Oscars telecast.”
But Stewart saved some fire for CNN and MSNBC too, calling the cable collective a “brutish, slow-witted beast.” Kurtz called Stewart’s comments “a far-ranging indictment” of what Stewart describes as “that false sense of urgency they create, the sense that everything is breaking news. The 24-hour networks are now driving the narratives and everyone else is playing catch-up.”