Comedian and former TV host of “The Daily Show” Jon Stewart accused the media Sunday of exacerbating conflicts instead of pursuing “de-escalation” and fact-based reporting.
Stewart gave an interview to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday’s episode of “State of the Union,” where he commented on the debates within the Democratic party that concern the ways of earning the voters’ backing in the midterm election in 2022.
Tapper asked his guest if he felt comfortable with the measures such as the California law requiring gender-neutral toy sections in large department stores and the introduction of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) into the school curricula across the nation.
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“I mean, there are a lot of things a lot of people don’t understand,” Stewart said, noting, however, that the problem is usually “with the way that the lens through which you view everything is based on.”
He added that holding performative liberal activism, some cases of which Tapper recounted, as responsible for Democrats’ failures is not “a fair assessment of what’s wrong with Democratic politics.” (RELATED: Jon Stewart ‘A Little Surprised’ At Pushback He Received For Believing In Lab-Leak Theory)
The former host of “The Daily Show” then lamented the media’s endless endeavor “to expose the conflict lines” which he said comes at the expense of covering what is “helpful.” He suggested comparing the numbers of “stories on battles over masks” and the ones on the scientific reasoning behind the mask requirements.
“I think the media does a terrible job at de-escalation. And de-escalation is the antidote to all of this nonsense. I don’t mean civility and nonpartisanship, I mean focusing on things that are more urgent and elemental in people’s lives, and really hammering away at those things,” he said.