MSNBC needs to be more ruthlessly ideological—not less—to help the left make the type of big policy gains that Fox News has enabled on the right, comedian Jon Stewart argued Thursday.
Discussing the overlap between conservative media and politics, Stewart pointed out that lawsuits have revealed Fox News executives did everything in their power to get President Donald Trump elected.
“This is absolutely corrupt, but this is how the f---ing world works,” he told guest Jen Psaki, a former press secretary for President Joe Biden turned MSNBC host, during the latest episode of his podcast The Weekly Show.
“None of these people are talking to each other and working together in any way,” he said.
“Well, yeah, because we think the other side is really messed up,” said Psaki, who also worked for the State Department under the Obama administration. “But it’s also how the world is working, which I think is a huge problem that Democrats need to be clearheaded and aware of.”
It’s also effective at creating policy, Stewart said. Fox has a clear mandate, whereas MSNBC hosts each have their own editorial point of view. Psaki pushed back, saying that decentralization is a good thing because it means MSNBC’s hosts can say whatever they want, and viewers can trust them.
“See, I disagree with that,” Stewart said.
Rather than being independent, MSNBC hosts are beholden to the minute-by-minute considerations of the news cycle, he said. The “greatest trick” former Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes ever played was “delegitimizing editorial authority” while imposing it on his own network.
“The greatest thing he did because it led them to be a mouthpiece of the right-wing,” Psaki shot back.
“It led them to exactly what he wanted it to be, which is an effective expression of his worldview,” Stewart argued.
Stewart added that he does not think MSNBC should become a mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, but he wanted the network to point out corporate excesses and muckrake “in the best sense of the word.”
“It can’t just be left to everybody’s random show,” he said. “I watch these shows all the time. I find them to be wildly redundant and not really have a macro view … It makes it less effective or interesting.”
