Jon Stewart on Monday cherry-picked thirteen seconds out of a 24 minute interview to accuse "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace of claiming, "We don't tell both sides of the story."
Unfortunately, that's not what Wallace said Sunday (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JON STEWART, HOST: The unedited version which is on the web had what I thought was the take away moment of the entire interview, where Chris Wallace, one of the more respected individuals at Fox, basically gives away the game.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEWART: You believe that Fox News is exactly the ideological equivalent of NBC News.
CHRIS WALLACE: I think we're the counterweight.
STEWART: You believe that…
WALLACE: I think that they have a liberal agenda and I think we tell the other side of the story.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEWART: The other side of the story. We don't, we don't tell both sides of the story. We tell one side. The other side, the one we perceive is never told, the conservative side.
Actually, that's not what Wallace said. Directly from the transcript:
WALLACE: I think that they have a liberal agenda and I think we tell the other side of the story.
Wallace didn't say, "We don't tell both sides of the story." He said, "We tell the other side of the story." That certainly doesn't preclude one from telling both sides.
The point Wallace was making was that outlets like NBC News only give the liberal viewpoint, and that Fox by comparison does tell the conservative side as well.
To suggest that Fox only offers conservative viewpoints or that this is what Wallace said is absurd.
After all, if that had been the case, the liberal Stewart wouldn't have been given almost one quarter of Sunday's program to express his liberal views, would he?
Stewart and his crew apparently didn't think about that.
They also ignored that that the other major guest Sunday besides Stewart was Obama's Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates. Would a member of the Obama administration be brought on Fox if the network doesn't tell both sides?
But it gets better, for Bill Burton, former Obama deputy press secretary, was part of the program's roundtable segment as was NPR's Mara Liasson.
Add it all up, and the "FNS" program Stewart was on actually had more liberal guests than conservatives, as only former Bush press secretary Dana Perino and the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol represented the right.
Talk about only telling one side.
As NewsBusters readers know, if one added up all the conservative contributors to ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC, they wouldn't equal the number of liberal contributors to Fox News.
But such logic is unimportant to Stewart and his followers:
(Laughter)
STEWART: And if the conservative side isn't being told, what's being told must be liberal. Fox News isn't fair and balanced, it's balancing the system, man. Don't you get it? The system's unfair and unbalanced! To balance the system, Fox has to be the purest form of right-wing resin because of how, because of how heavy left-wing America is. Hollywood, comedians, every single news organization, the internet, facts, history, science, it's all just left-wing bullshit, man! Each one of those things designed purely to shut down conservatives.
Yes, Stewart really did suggest that facts, history, and science are all exclusive to liberals. Pretty disgusting. But he wasn't finished:
STEWART: But don't worry, Broseph, Fox isn't going to let that happen. Is fox unbalanced? Yeah. Seriously, like their ears are nearly touching the floor. But it's only because the system's unbalanced. At least, I thought that was what Chris Wallace was saying, which I thought was an interesting point.
If that's what Stewart really thought Wallace was saying, he's got more than his ears touching the floor.
But what can you expect from a guy that shortly after appearing on Fox was quickly exposed by PolitiFact for falsely claiming that its audience are "the most consistently misinformed media viewers?"
As NewsBusters' Rich Noyes pointed out Monday, it's Stewart who's the ignorant one.
Color me unsurprised that he didn't address this falsehood of his Monday evening.
That would be telling both sides.
