Washington Post media analyst Howard Kurtz has a fairly interesting piece out today on Daily Show host Jon Stewart. Entitled "The Campaign of a Comedian", the piece in fact runs on the front page of the paper this morning.

My favorite graphs come when Kurtz relates reactions of mainstream journalists to Stewart. Here are a few examples:

Says [Tucker] Carlson [of CNN's Crossfire]: "Jon Stewart is a talented comedian, and all of a sudden he wants to be Kathleen Hall Jamieson," the University of Pennsylvania author and media analyst.

"There are things wrong with cable shout-shows, definitely. There are things wrong with 'Crossfire.' What bothered me was the pomposity and sanctimony, the notion that we're the problem. He doesn't understand the role of shows like ours in the media food chain. Not only was he not funny, he was not interesting. Banal."

[...]

Some journalists have rallied to his defense. "Jon Stewart never said he was going to renounce his standing as a smart guy who went to William and Mary and as a sharp social critic," says NBC anchor Brian Williams, a past "Daily Show" guest. "Sure he has an impact. The din of our media has reached the point where we could use a have-you-no-sense-of-decency-sir-at-long-last moment."

[Ted] Koppel [of ABC's Nightline] takes issue with Stewart's insistence that journalists should put forth the "truth." "Jon feels people like me in particular should be more opinionated, not less. He feels I have a responsibility to get in there and tell the public, 'Look, this guy is lying' -- maybe not quite that blatantly. I disagree with that only in part. . . . In a live interview you can say, 'That doesn't sound right,' but you don't automatically have all the facts at your disposal."

Check out the link to get the rest of the article.