Jon Stewart Propaganda Techniques - Installment #1

11/1/2012 | Guy Smith

[guyshomenet]

(direct link in case embedded video does not work = http://youtu.be/rzx9U7qkVGA)

(transcript of video follows)

Jon Stewart is the most interesting propagandist working today.

After Shooting The Bull, my book on propaganda analysis came out, I watched how many in the professional agitprop business have evolved. Stewart is more interesting than most not because of any new method of propaganda he has invented, but because of how he knits together standard techniques to completely mislead his viewers.

Let’s have a look at a couple of examples in which Jon skews your understanding of politics.

{Daily Show clip – Romney bash}

This one is clever for a couple of reasons. First, Jon begins with the premise, humorously spun, that Mitt Romney is dumb. Doing so is essential in biasing viewers’ perceptions before introducing misleading elements. It is essential because if he presented the following unrelated clips without such pre-biasing, you would immediately question Jon’s assumptions.

{ Daily Show clip – Romney plan & prediction clips}

Notice the difference in content which Jon combined as if they were the same. In the first video, Romney is discussing policy and plans, and in the second he is speculating on the reaction of the public to an Obama defeat. Personal plans and public reactions are, of course, entirely different concepts, and entirely unrelated … which doesn’t stop Jon from relating them.

{ Daily Show clip – Stewart con}

This is what the Catalog of Canards, the summary chapter in Shooting The Bull, calls “The Lie of Context: Showing either a small snippet alone, or a string of snippets together, to create a false impression of what happened.” By juxtaposing unrelated items in a hurried and highly edited manner, and then proclaiming them to be associated … and in this case duplicitous … Jon reinforces the false premise with which he started the segment.   This is an important element in his style of propaganda. Unlike most in that distasteful business, he sets the stage first, then delivers the false information. Lesser practitioners reverse the process, which is much less effective.

In another example of invalid comparison, Stewart married two completely different news items whose only union was that students were involved. He begins with a story about voluntary participation by high school students in a music video concerning lousy cafeteria food:

{ Daily Show clip – high school video report}

After which he berates Fox News for having an opinion … well, one that differs from his. Where Stewart’s propaganda begins is when he compares it with a four year old news item:

{ Daily Show clip – elementary school clip}

In short Stewart is equating different things. First is the voluntary participation in a video by cognizant adolescents approaching adulthood, complaining about lousy school lunches. The second concerns very young and politically ignorant children … let me repeat, CHILDREN … being blindly lead in pro-Obama praise songs. Two different groups of people with vastly different degrees of development, education and independence, and two entirely different topics for which one group volunteered to participate and the other had no choice. Jon used The Lie of Non Sequiturs, the combining of completely unrelated information to create a false impression or conclusion, to then bash his favorite opponent … the only news network he doesn’t agree with … which should tell you something about the general state of television journalism.

There are more examples, simple ones like his use of mutually enforcing premises:

{ Daily Show clip – false duality stunt}

Core to his mission, Jon employs an old used car salesman trick. When you walk onto a car lot, the fellows in the plaid pants always start the conversation by getting you to agree with them. “Nice day we’re having.” “Cute kid you have there.” Anything that binds the salesman to the shopper – that creates an agreeable connection. Little in life is more agreeable than a good laugh, yet little less agreeable than deception.

Jon’s approach, using comedy to create emotional agreement with the audience allows him to insert propaganda with little objection, or at least for the bad information to be laughed off instead of being rejected. This isn’t original. One could argue that Will Rogers was occasionally a humor-leading propagandist. It is an old art. But Stewart advances the science with better editing and writing.

But it’s still bull.

[tom paine 2]

This would be helpful if I actally watched this goof. I no longer watch him, Morning Schmo, MTP, FTN, TW, CNN or any network news program and I hope you don’t either

[laweeks]

I am really surprised that you were watching his pathetic show or anything else from the lamestream media.

But, I will certainly watch these morons after Romney kicks the Kenyan foreigner’s ass Tuesday. Can’t wait to listen to “Tingles” the clown and Sgt. Schultz. Just can’t wait. I might even DVR the scumbags for further enjoyment.

[ClearCase_guy]

Humorists and propagandists basically have the same skill set. They do two things well:

1) set up the punchline
2) juxtapose two things things that don't really go together, but which can suddenly appear to be intimately connected and make a lightbulb flash in someone's head, if only for a moment.

The goal is either laughter (for humorists) or getting people to take political action (for propagandists) -- or both (Jon Stewart and his ilk).

[Cicero]

The problem is that, unlike some of the others, Jon Stewart is very smooth and amusing. He’s only not funny if you are a conservative who fully understands what he is up to.

[ozzymandus]

A lot of kids and lefties get their “news” from The Daily Show. A local newspaper editor actually stated in a column that she got most of her information from that show. I wrote a letter calling her an idiot, but for some reason she’s still there.

[RckyRaCoCo]

Jon Leibowitz...just another leftist Alinsky disciple propagandist cleverly disguised(and self-proclaimed)as "just a comedian".

...yet just another(made for TV)sheeple messiah.

[MtBaldy]

I bought your book, Kindle edition, and checked out your website. It’s an interesting bio but I notice there’s no mention of education. Now, your writing indicates a degree of education so I’m wondering: Are you entirely self taught or do you have diplomas somewhere you just feel aren’t worth mentioning? I mean, is there anything, other than working in marketing, that qualifies you to write about the propoganda techniques of some of the viler mouthpieces of the American Left? Just curious.

ps

I read the foreward and it’s promising but my Kindle’s battery was completely dead and it’s charging. I plan to read the rest tonight over a cup of coffee while I’m not watching TV.

[guyshomenet]

I have a B.S. (appropriate, eh?) in Management and did some MBA work before realizing that I learned more from work than the masters program.

Thanks for buying the book, and congrats on not watching TV. I tossed mine in the trash a couple of years ago.

[Jmathes]

Nice Jon Stewart explanation here! http://joshmathes.tumblr.com/day/2012/10/13/