You know, it’s very telling about the state of news and news anchors as a whole when Jon Stewart is considered the most trusted, taking the mantle from Walter Cronkite (and that’s the way the question was phrased: “Now that Walter Cronkite has passed on, who is America’s most trusted newscaster?”). In a recent Time Magazine poll, Jon Stewart was ranked most trusted among the primary network news anchors.
Jon Stewart – 44%
Brian Williams – 29%
Charles Gibson – 19%
Katie Couric – 7%
Honestly, if I’ve got the news on at 5:30 (and I do many nights of the week), I’ve got it on CBS, for the most part because that’s the network my parents and grandparents always watched. Personally, I don’t think Couric is doing all that bad of a job, but that said, I get more news from Jon Stewart than many other sources. At the very least, especially compared with the cable news networks (read: MSNBC, Faux News, etc.), Stewart wears his bias on his sleeve. You know where he stands. And he’s probably the best interviewer on television, both with Republicans and Democrats. He isn’t out to get the big story. He just wants to ask you well-considered questions that you probably won’t be asked by the other networks.
Anyway, I found it pretty amusing…
Edit: Please note that there were a little over 9000 votes, when I posted this, total in that poll. If you click the “next” button, you are taken to the next poll on Time Magazine online…which tells us Bing is better than Google…mostly according to Iowa… Apparently, this (these?) poll(s) should be taken with a metric ton of salt…