The United States' most trusted newsman is a comedian
Pictured: PPD, anchor of France's Les Guignols de l'info.
We've turned a corner in the USA.
I used to live in France, where the most trusted source for news was Les Guignols de l'info, and it still is. This is a comedic puppet show, created after Britain's Spitting Image.
In the early 1960s, when Walter Cronkite first became our most trusted news presenter, we saw the United States as a young republic which had played a big role in preserving democracy and restoring order. We wished to believe that we were transparent in our politics, that reason would rule. We saw ourselves as fair people, and we mostly agreed on what we should be and do.
The French embraced their puppet show version of the news 20 years ago, I believe, because they are a post-colonial empire in which power is overly centralized, with a cooled level of influence on the world stage. The French understand that their politics are corrupt, their leaders obfuscate. They deal with the fact that bad compromises often trump reason. Their basic assumptions about how their society is ordered make them blind to injustice. They are riven by factions.
And as The Imperial United States starts its down-hill slide, our most trusted newsman is a comedian. One who, at every opportunity, rails at the actual journalists he lampoons to do their fucking jobs. And we are not, and can't see ourselves as, the republic we were in 1963.
Poll Results - Now that Walter Cronkite has passed on, who is America's most trusted newscaster? | TIME
