On this week’s episode of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart attacked the media for routinely blaming the political opposition in the wake of mass shootings.
Stewart opened by informing the audience that there have been six mass shootings in the past 24 hours. He then explained that when the country faced such tragedy in the past, “the routine would be we express our shock, we express our sadness, we offer thoughts and prayers, we spend a day or two arguing about the appropriateness of bringing up guns at all, and then we do nothing until the next time.” But now, the cycle has been replaced by a “new post-shooting pastime” Stewart labled as “what this one yours?”
Stewart then cut to clips of several news outlets plastering political motivations onto mass shooters, saying things like, “The guy is a right-wing Trump-supporting evangelical Christian,” and “He is a Biden supporter. Case closed.”
“It’s America’s new gender reveal tradition,” Stewart joked. “‘Boom! It’s blue! Ha ha! I’m so happy to blame you! For violence!’ The game is so ubiquitous, now it’s often played before we even know who the perpetrator is.”
Stewart later explained that it wasn’t always like this. He said that in the “good ol’ days of mass shootings,” the media made a point to “not shower attention on acts designed to get attention.”
Stewart then cut to clips of older news coverage of mass shootings, with pundits saying things like, “We will not say the gunman’s name or show his photograph,” and “We don’t like naming the gunman because so often they do things just to get attention.”
“That’s right, boys and girls, when I was a boy, there was a brief period in American media where not only wouldn’t they say the suspected killer’s name, they wouldn’t constantly show the suspected killer’s OnlyFans hot shots,” Stewart said, before cutting to a shirtless photo of Luigi Mangione. “Oh, dear lord! Oh, my god! He could have done so much good with those!”
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Watch the entire segment below.
From Variety US