I guess we can never expect hard news, reporting, and solid journalism from someone whose hero is Jon Stewart.

Ok Ash….you and CNN make a good team.

She shouldn’t take it so personally… but she should plan out every call and let people know she is calling, just not tell the viewers. The dead air of watching them call is so awkward, that’s really want you want to avoid in television. Maybe it’d be better to just have the people on the line ready to talk, and do the phone call before the show actually starts. There isn’t any tension for viewers while waiting for someone to pick up.. it’s just awkward.

That’s true.  It’s actually a cute segment idea for the early morning, but they need to work on the execution of it.

my friend’s step-aunt makes $80/hr on the laptop. She has been without work for 6 months but last month her pay was $8222 just working on the laptop for a few hours. Here is the site… CashHard.com

Yeah, not like the hard news on Fox and friends huh?

So your aunt runs a porn site?

Oh, yeah? My step-uncle’s nephew’s friend makes $90 an hour ”on the laptop.” All he has to do is constantly spam sites with b.s. weblinks meant to lure suckers into giving up their financial information to the Nigerian mob. You should get your debit card out and then go to this site: http://www.cashharder.com

Wakening people is not funny unless it is someone like Danny DeVito. You have to use common sense and find people it is fun to play with.

If Fox and Friends called themselves a hard hitting news team on the air, they would immediately have to consult with their in-studio fact-checking team, who would force them to retract everything in a mumbled 3-second correction the following day.

That’s why the goons on F&F and Fox “News” make a good team as well!

Right – this story is about Fox.  Get a life.

It’s one thing to try and offer light entertainment, human interest etc along with headlines and weather. It’s quite another to start every day with a does of BS propaganda like F&F does. They smile into the camera and don’t give a crap whether what they say is accurate or reasonable.

Waking has-been celebrities would be a great segment. I’d start with Nick Nolte, though CNN would probably screw it up and call Kathy Griffin every day.

You’re right Tina it isn’t. However, it is about an early morning show so expecting hard news , solid reporting and journalsim isn’t really very realisitic no matter which network we’re talking about. If you’re going to take partisan cheap shots don’t whine when someone hits back.
I’d rather see a failed light enetertainment bit than hear another line of dog whistle BS from F&F’s

just give Jon a call tomorrow, and see what happens..

She really needs that thick skin, deep one at that. 

Stewart’s audience is more informed than let’s say someone who watches Fox News. 

I knew that had to smart because you just know these chicks and everyone behind the scenes working on the show worship Stewart.

Just don’t ask them who the speaker of the house is or ambassador to the united nations or what countries border Iraq or who started America’s involvement in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.

Break out your Media Matters bible.  Repeat after me:  Hate! Hate! 
Hate! Hate! 
Hate! Hate!    Keep spewing it and maybe you’ll convince someone.  Age-old formula.

As a woman, aged 40, possibly due to age, divorce, children,
family and other reasons, I do not believe in the idea of “fall in love
again”. But my friend introduced me to a fantastic website,

RichFlirt.org…where I not only found a rich “him”, but
also lived a better life. So try this site, never be alone any more, and
believe in yourself. cute guys and pretty girls are all in here online
chatting. come join us.

It is indeed. Have you noticed how Fox and Friends applies it. My conclusion comes from years of occasionally tuning in  and seeing the same old dishonest unreasoning dogwhistle crap morning after morning. Very little meaningful discussion or presentation of the facts. Just a repeated theme, Conservatives {their target audience} are the good guys, the real true Americans who love thier country, and the liberals are the bad guys who want to ruin America by having all those un-American thoughts and ideas.Morning after morning after morning, just as you described. btw; They aren’t worthy of the energy it takes to really hate. They just deserve disdain for their consistant dishonesty in pursuit of a paychceck.

I used to like Media MAtters when it seemed they presented the facts , but I haven’t paid any attention to them for a long time because they became far to partisan and focused on Beck. If they do the same partisan dishonest dance as Fox and Friends, they deserve the same disdain. You don’t excuse anything by claiming , “they do it too”

If you want to argue that they’re no better than Fox & Friends, you make a good point.

In gneral , morning shows do the headlines , weather , and lighter side stories right? Is it realistic to expect hard news, and real journalism? That’s what I responded to initially. Fox and Friends, IMO go a step beyond that to regularly create false controversy , and distort the facts to pander to thier conservative audience. They are regularly dishonest while they do that. I think the 24/7 “news” channels are all pretty useless and doing a horrible job at bringing relevant important information to the public, but there is a difference in being lazy and superficial and intentionally dishonest.

@Mencius:disqus ….franntytt…Would you like to work from home? Read more here: LazyCash4.com and you will find out how to get a nice income every month.

Would she be more of a journalist if her hero was the pill-popper Limbaugh? Who’s your hero Tina?

So your aunt’s a whore, and you’re following in her footsteps. Got it.

If you don’t have the Media Matters bible, just use the regular Bible. It’s got a track record, and millions of deaths to prove it.

Danny DeVito is has-been? Have you seen “It’s always Sunny in Philadelphia”? It’s hilarious and does really well in the ratings.

I disagree: if she were a ‘good teammate’ with CNN, she’d have done one of two things: told her producer before the stupid segment that got her on TDS in the first place that it was stupid & she wasn’t going to do it, or else now be trying to convert the criticism to a positive, by say accepting the criticism was merited & moving on from this ‘learning moment’. Instead, she’s done exactly the wrong thing, risking exacerbating the situation by doubling down on the stupid, not even troubling to acknowledge what Stewart was saying was wrong the original segment. So, the only sense in which she is a ‘good teammate’ with CNN is in the Titanic context: helping to re-arrange the deck chairs as the prow starts to rise higher & higher.

please name them. 

Wow, she totally missed the point.  Instead of being remorseful or even remotely sheepish about cold calling someone to talk about their dead dad, she makes it all about her own feelings being hurt.  “Wah.  Someone called me out for being rude, that’s so mean.”  Give me a break.

Looks like Jon Stewart is up to his partisan tricks again.  Oh, wait…

Are you kidding me? You call  Kerry Kennedy at 5 am (daughter of the late Robert Kennedy) and ask if she has any haunting memories of her assassinated father? Then the next morning your back on the air crying playing victom because Stewart picked up on it? Stay Classy…

So after this little flash of anger at her “hero’, do this mean a couple of weeks from now we get Ashleigh in the Kathy Bates role and Jon Stewart as James Caan, tied up in a cabin somewhere in northwest New Jersey with two broken legs?

Banfield never misses an episode of the Daily Show because she enjoys watching Stewart attack conservatives, but when she gets the treatment, she finds out it isn’t so fun. Imagine how shocked she was last night while watching the show expecting to see Stewart attacking some evil conservative and then…BAM!!!

This is another reason why Stewart rarely attacks his liberal friends. He is trapped by his partisan bias. If he attacks too many liberals, he loses his audience and his supporters in the media.

I believe Justin was speaking of Daily Show viewership.  Not Michael Steele, Sarah Palin or Herman Cain. All of whom have proven their absolute lack of knowledge of the aforementioned historical subjects.

banfield is an idiot, and disturbing people’s sleep is beyond idiocy. . . Stewart, as usual is right on target.  I got an idea. . .let’s post her personal phone number online so we can call her in the middle of the night and see how she likes it. . . what a stupid stupid idea.

too bad a robotonic like yourself can’t see the humor and intelligence with Stewart. . . I guess you think hannity is for real. . ahahahahahahah

no, let’s call her in the middle of the night and see how funny she thinks that is. . . its not Stewart who is superficial and mindless. . .

No, you and your producer need to be fired for the stunt which is a basic Journalism 101 rule. If you are going to tape a telephone conversation you must inform the person in advance. There’s a little federal wiretap law on the books you nitwits! 

So it’s legal to impersonate a FBI agent now?

>> Bonnie McGuinness: “Banfield is an idiot, and disturbing people’s sleep is beyond idiocy. Let’s post her personal phone number online so we can call her in the middle of the night and see how she likes it.”

To me, that’s the heart of the matter. It’s bad enough that this is an old, stale joke that’s already been beaten to death on radio and what not. So it’s not as if Banfield is breaking any kind of new ground (much as her deluded ego might be telling her otherwise). But worst of all, she doesn’t even have a natural sense of comedic timing to even make the gag work, which just makes it even more groan-inducing. Translation: she SUCKS at it.

Which brings us to the larger issue: who the hell would ever want to be woken up this way? Not to mention, she obviously has no idea what’s actually happening in anyone’s lives or what they’re possibly going through privately. And it’s not as if Banfield is SUCH a star that even after you realized you’d been punked that you’d be saying “Oh, wow! I can’t believe I’m talking to YOU, Ashleigh! My whole year has just been made!!!”

Bottom line: Banfield has shown she’s a TRIPLE loser. As I said before, she has no sense of comedic timing for even pulling the gag off… She has no manners given that’s she’s doing it at all… and now, as we can see from her reaction to the Jon Stewart Show… Banfield has shown that she’s incredibly thin skinned as well. In other words, she can dish it out, but can’t take it.

Which is why I agree with Bonnie. Some nice karmic payback would be for some computer hackers or anyone else to get a hold of Banfield’s personal numbers, so they could be passed around the Net far and wide. And then people could just start cold calling her at all hours of the day. Let’s see just how funny she finds it when the shoe’s on the other foot.

Then again, it’s a sure bet she’d whine like a baby given what a hack talent she continually proves herself to be. Seriously, why is she still even on? She was always a mid-level TV personality at best, and her Andy Warhol 15 minutes of exposure was up long ago given that she’s never really done anything THAT momentous in terms of news broadcasting. If CNN was interested in REALLY making a run at morning audiences, then they WOULD go out and hire fresher faces to host the show.

If Stewart changed his shtick and only attacked Liberals, you’d quit watching him after two weeks.

Who’s the “robotonic” now?

I’ve been around long enough to remember when Ashleigh Banfield was the darling of the liberals for daring to speak out against the Iraq war and getting fired from MSNBC over her outspoken criticism.

Stewart is an equal opportunity critic of the news media. . .apparently you don’t watch his program. . .too intelligent for you. . .its not shtick baby, its called political humor. . .live with it. . . why don’t you have banfield call you in the middle of the night. . .who in their right mind would approve her waking up Ms. Kennedy in the middle of the night to ask her feelings about her father’s assassination. . .you are pathetic. . . go away

So it’s ok with you if I hate you?
That’s good, I was worried what might happen if I did so without your approval.
Which, btw, I was doing on a fairly consistent basis.

Oh, I almost forgot. Is it ok if I hate Obama? And if not, you might want to clean up your own filthy house before you start worrying about mine.
But if so, why then is it not ok if I hate all the wrong-wing slobs (don’t take that the wrong way, that is, that you’re excluded)?
As I do.
For a multitude of justifiable reasons.

Watch Morning Joe and Chuck Todd on MSNBC.

How about canning the segment and doing something else and never mentioning it again.
Did you watch it on the other story? It’s beyond lame.

It’s ok.
He doesn’t do facts.

Not only that, given the lack of a humor gene in the wrong-wing DNA, conservaslobs have had to look to JS for clever attacks on liberals.
Apparently, the rube crap that Limpbough spews, just aint gettin’ it.

You seem to miss the point.
He attacks conservidiots because they’re consistently ludicrous.
Just read their posts here, or worse yet, on a wrong-wing site like newsbusters.
You know, as in, “these people walk among us”.

Maybe a QUADRUPLE loser in that she fails to realize why she’s being zapped in the first place.

 Hilarious that she doesn’t get that SHE’S PART OF THE MEDIA PROBLEM.

i bet she is up at midnight for work in the morning….

You know, I was scratching my head over that one, too. And in reading the posted comments here, I was surprised that more people hadn’t brought THAT topic up.

It’s my understanding that it IS illegal to impersonate Federal Law Enforcement. In fact, it doesn’t have to be Federal. If you falsely identify yourself as even a local cop that’s also a criminal act.

So, I wouldn’t be surprised if — behind the scenes — CNN management or Banfield herself got a polite “reminder” call from the powers that be to cut that sh*t out ASAP.

Banfield is by far and away the absolute worst of the worst on cable news. This moron pointed to US troops and called them “gunmen,” from beneath her scarf.

No thanks. Maybe they, or he is just as bad, If that’s the case I’m not at all interested not am I interested in arguing which media failures are failing us the most. IMO, all the 24/7 “news” networks deserve to lose their viewers. The problem is they only need enough people to convince thier sponsers, so they don’t really need to be concerned about actually honestly informing the public on cvery relevant matters.

Why does anyone watch the crap on television anymore? it’s not like on your death bed you’re goin be wishin you had seen more episodes of american idle, or CNN taking a dump on your intellect.

television is a tool of  control by the corporations who own America, do you need another leash around your neck? isn’t the one from the credit card companies and the irs and the student loans enough?

you can live life or you can watch a pseudo reality that turns you into a passive puppet and programs you to be a good little consumer and to shut up, sit  down and be a zombie.

its your  life and you will never get it  back, choose wisely, it really does matter.

I interpret to me  that what you wrote is the CNN segment was just plain wrong in the idea and the execution.  Whoever was the man she called was an unfortunate victim of an insensitive practical joke.  BTW what is so practical about these jokes anyway.
Maybe being over dramatic.  It reminds me of how the so called normal people would for their entertainment laugh and jeer  at  the inmates of Bedlam  Stewart is right in his assessment, opinion.

What is the justification of this segment except to humiliate the person being called so the rest of us can feel superior.

re: “She makes it her own feelings were being hurt.”    She seems like an insensitive  bitch.

Doesn’t that also apply to Hannity’s audience and all the talking heads on Fox and people like Coulter and Limbaugh?   It’s his show, he gets to talk about what he wants to. He goes after the Dems and the president when he finds something that he wants to satirize. He’s done that to Obama, and a host of other Democrats including his childhood friend Weiner. There’s absolutely no reason to expect him to be even handed. The show honestly reflects his personal views on most things which are decidedly liberal. He thinks SSM should be legal and the objections to it are stupid so he points that out. He thinks the news media is failing in thier job of informing the public on relevant issues, so he points that out. He thinks the political process is messed up and disfunctional so he points that out. Just last week  they pointed out that the whole Pro Forma session of congress to block appointments was BS, and pointed out that both parties did it.

Cosmos Dan

It’s legit, And all political.

But Dan, Jon would reject your comparison of him to Hannity, Rush and Coulter. And because Stewart criticizes the media because he thinks they are lacking, doesn’t that mean that he himself should at least try to hold himself to the same lofty standards when it comes to informing his audience with all available information? My criticism of him is that he usually only gives one side of the story and omits things that would ruin the meme he is trying to promote.

I seriously would like Stewart to do an experiment to see just how loyal his fans are. I’d like to see him do nothing but rip Obama and the Democrats apart for an entire month. I bet within the second or third week those trained seals out in his audience would start shouting him down and throwing things at him and Hollywood and the liberal media would disown him.

“But Dan, Jon would reject your comparison of him to Hannity, Rush and Coulter”

I’m sure he would since they’re not professional comics. The point was that none of them are actual journalists or reporters. They all give thier opinion and commentary and get paid well to do so.

“doesn’t that mean that he himself should at least try to hold himself to
the same lofty standards when it comes to informing his audience with
all available information?”

No it doesn’t mean that at all. If you’re a reporter, journalist or something like that working for a news network you have a totally different job discription than a professional comic. Jon does satire which is offereing commentary on what the people he mocks should or shouldn’t be doing. They are failing at thier jobs, he’s not failing at his.
If I go to a mechanic that continuously fails at fixing my car I don’t have to be a mechanic to know he sucks at his job.

“I seriously would like Stewart to do an experiment to see just how loyal his fans are”

It’s meaningless. Would you expect Limbaugh’s fans to stay wioth him if he bashed the GOP and prasied Democrats. Jon’s a good comic and has chosen satire as his medium of expression. I think he could successfully do comedy or satire about the human condition without doing poltical comedy but good satire requires the ring of truth in observation , not just midllessly bashing someone.

Ashley is awesome….She is such an upbeat person.

The whole point of Stewart’s bit was not to “attack” Banfield and CNN, nor to criticize her for cold-calling people at 5 am, but to cold-call people at 5 in the morning AND ask them about THE DAY THEIR FATHER WAS KILLED!, something some commenters seemed to have missed.  I don’t know how anyone sees that as harmless whether it’s CNN doing it or Fox and Friends. The political leanings of the players DOES NOT MATTER – it’s tacky and appalling to do to ANYONE, period. And for a seasoned, experienced journalist to do that is even worse. I don’t know which producer thought that was a good idea but he/she should be fired. They should have at least reviewed the questions they were going to ask their victims first – and maybe made a big “no asking anyone about the deaths of their spouses/parents/kids – not funny!” rule for the segment.

Mr. Stewart is exactly on target. I use to expect more from CNN. Looking for another news outlet.
Really …shamefull

The Germans attacked us in WWI?

The sinking of the Lusitania (while British, it left port in New York and had many Americans on it) was the first step of getting the US in the war.

Ashleigh Banfield, after what you did in the Middle East some years ago   in the West bank, when you spoke to little Arab children, and what you tried to make them say against israeli soldiers.
In my opinion you don’t belong on CNN news. (@ that time you were working for NBC).  

So Ashleigh Banfield is going to “dig in”?  What does that mean? Make more stupid wake up calls that are not funny?
Jon Stewart was not trying to tear you down, you left yourself wide open with your falling flat on your face bit with your attempt as brash humor.

@dandmb50 – Just admit it Ashleigh, you’re just plain GOOFY, and I’m sure the Early Start will not last, but then you never know with CNN. .. Daniel  .. Toronto .. http://bit.ly/AshGOOFY