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Jon Stewart and Passage of Sept 11 Bill
Jon Stewart and Passage of Sept 11 Bill
Comedy Central
Jon Stewart, left, spoke with 9/11 first responders about their health problems on “The Daily Show” on Dec. 16.
Did the bill pledging federal funds for the health care of 9/11 responders become law in the waning hours of the 111th Congress only because a
Certainly many supporters, including New York’s two senators, as well as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, played critical roles in turning around
what looked like a hopeless situation after a filibuster by Republican senators on Dec. 10 seemed to derail the bill.
But some of those who stand to benefit from the bill have no doubt about what — and who — turned the momentum around.
“I don’t even know if there was a deal, to be honest with you, before his show,” said Kenny Specht, the founder of the New York City
Firefighter Brotherhood Foundation, who was interviewed by Mr. Stewart on Dec. 16.
That show was devoted to the bill and the comedian’s effort to right what he called “an outrageous abdication of our responsibility to those
Mr. Specht said in an interview, “I’ll forever be indebted to Jon because of what he did.”
Mr. Bloomberg, a frequent guest on “The Daily Show,” also recognized Mr. Stewart’s role.
“Success always has a thousand fathers,” the mayor said in an e-mail. “But Jon shining such a big, bright spotlight on Washington’s
potentially tragic failure to put aside differences and get this done for America was, without a doubt, one of the biggest factors that led to the
final agreement.”
Though he might prefer a description like “advocacy satire,” what Mr. Stewart engaged in that night — and on earlier occasions when he
campaigned openly for passage of the bill — usually goes by the name “advocacy journalism.”
There have been other instances when an advocate on a television show turned around public policy almost immediately by concerted focus
“The two that come instantly to mind are Murrow and Cronkite,” said Robert J. Thompson, a professor of television at Syracuse University.
Edward R. Murrow turned public opinion against the excesses of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Mr. Thompson noted that Mr.
Murrow had an even more direct effect when he reported on the case of Milo Radulovich, an Air Force lieutenant who was stripped of his
commission after he was charged with associating with communists. Mr. Murrow’s broadcast resulted in Mr. Radulovich’s reinstatement.
Walter Cronkite’s editorial about the stalemate in the war in Vietnam after the Tet Offensive in 1968 convinced President Lyndon B.
Johnson that he had lost public support and influenced his decision a month later to decline to run for re-election.
Though the scale of the impact of Mr. Stewart’s telecast on public policy may not measure up to the roles that Mr. Murrow and Mr. Cronkite
played, Mr. Thompson said, the comparison is legitimate because the law almost surely would not have moved forward without him. “He so
pithily articulated the argument that once it was made, it was really hard to do anything else,” Mr. Thompson said.
The Dec. 16 show focused on two targets. One was the Republicans who were blocking the bill; Mr. Stewart, in a clear effort to shame them for
hypocrisy, accused them of belonging to “the party that turned 9/11 into a catchphrase.” The other was the broadcast networks (one of them
being CBS, the former home of Mr. Murrow and Mr. Cronkite), which, he charged, had not reported on the bill for more than two months.
“Though, to be fair,” Mr. Stewart said, “it’s not every day that Beatles songs come to iTunes.” (Each of the network newscasts had covered the
story of the deal between the Beatles and Apple for their music catalog.) Each network subsequently covered the progress of the bill,
sometimes citing Mr. Stewart by name. The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, credited Mr. Stewart with raising awareness of the
Republican blockade.
Eric Ortner, a former ABC News senior producer who worked as a medic at the World Trade Center site on 9/11, expressed dismay that Mr.
“In just nine months’ time, my skilled colleagues will be jockeying to outdo one another on 10th anniversary coverage” of the attacks, Mr.
Ortner wrote in an e-mail. “It’s when the press was needed most, when sunlight truly could disinfect,” he said, that the news networks were
not there.
Brian Williams, the anchor of “NBC Nightly News” and another frequent Stewart guest, did not comment on his network’s news judgment in
how it covered the bill, but he did offer a comment about Mr. Stewart’s role.
“Jon gets to decide the rules governing his own activism and the causes he supports,” Mr. Williams said, “and how often he does it — and his
audience gets to decide if they like the serious Jon as much as they do the satirical Jon.”
Mr. Stewart is usually extremely careful about taking serious positions for which he might be accused of trying to exert influence. He went to
great lengths to avoid commenting about the intentions of his Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington in October, and the rally
In this case, Mr. Stewart, who is on vacation, declined to comment at all on the passage of the bill. He also ordered his staff not to comment or
even offer any details on how the show was put together.
But Mr. Specht, the show guest, described how personally involved Mr. Stewart was in constructing the segment.
After the news of the Republican filibuster broke, “The Daily Show” contacted John Feal, an advocate for 9/11 victims, who then referred the
Mr. Stewart met with the show’s panel of first responders in advance and briefed them on how the conversation would go. He even decided
which seat each of the four men should sit in for the broadcast.
For Mr. Stewart, the topic of the 9/11 attacks has long been intensely personal. He lives in the TriBeCa area and has noted that in the past, he
was able to see the World Trade Center from his apartment. Like other late-night comedians, he returned to the air shaken by the events and
public policy, Mr. Thompson of Syracuse said. “Comedy has the potential to have an important role in framing the way we think about civic
life,” he said.
And Mr. Stewart has thrust himself into the middle of that potential, he said.
“I have to think about how many kids are watching Jon Stewart right now and dreaming of growing up and doing what Jon Stewart does,” Mr.
Thompson said. “Just like kids two generations ago watched Murrow or Cronkite and dreamed of doing that. Some of these ambitious
appetites and callings that have brought people into journalism in the past may now manifest themselves in these other arenas, like comedy.”
A version of this news analysis appeared in print on December 27, 2010, on page B1 of the New York edition.