Persuasive Essay On John Stewart Speech

686 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Media impact on people and politics

John Stewart, a comedian, gave a thought provoking speech at the end of the “Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear” in Washington, DC about the reality of the political influence and provides ways to expose the media’s errors. Stewart builds a persuasive point about the danger of media influence by using simple, yet, truthful analogies and employs the use of repetition throughout his speech. In the beginning of Stewart’s speech, he uses analogies to link the idea of the media having a destructive influence on our society. The first analogy he used to express that the media explodes current day issues out of proportion by saying it is like they are using a “magnifying glass to light ants on fire.” A simplistic tool with a sole purpose to see things clearly; …show more content…

He uses repetition to remind and credit Americans that they are united unlike what the media says. Throughout the end of the speech, Stewart carefully imbeds repetitional phrases such as “we work together” and “we get things done.” He truly expresses the reality of America as honestly as he could compared to the deception and the disillusion of the media that has been feeding the public with lies. As a matter of fact, Stewart believes everyday Americans have as much tolerance and unity for one another’s values more than the media has given credit for. The American people are warned to be more cautious about the persona the media gives off about everyday situation of hate and violence, and they should believe less of what the media tries to make us understand. Because the media is runned by people who don’t even know what they’re talking about, their judgements shouldn’t be accounted as a viable source of information as information should be judged by everyday people as they are part of the everyday life. Stewart urges the continuation of the American tolerance for each other without being discouraged by the media’s misinformed and misjudged biases, and if they don’t, it could collapse their already established

Show More
Related

  • Words Triumph Over Images Summary

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    In his editorial "Words Triumph Over Images," Curtis Wilkie blames today’s media for being “reckless” and “a mutant reality show”. He believes that television and radio are “unfiltered”, which causes the quality of journalism for newspapers to be unmatched. Yet, it is unfair to label all media that is not print as lesser because the quality of any media relies on the viewers and the individual journalists, and in drastic situations like a hurricane, reporters may have many road blocks. Any of these aspects can affect the quality of journalism, which invalidates Curtis Wilkie’s claim.

    Read More

  • By George C. Edwards III, Martin P. Wattenberg, And Robert L. Lineberry

    1113 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “Reporting the News” by George C. Edwards III, Martin P. Wattenberg, and Robert L. Lineberry, the main idea is how the media determines what to air, where to get said stories that will air, how the media presents the news, and the medias effect on the general public. “Reporting The News” is a very strong and detailed article. The authors’ purpose is to inform the readers of what goes on in the news media. This can be inferred by the authors’ tone. The authors’ overall tone is critical of the topics that are covered. The tone can be determined by the authors’ strong use of transitions, specific examples, and phrases or words that indicate analysis. To summarize, first, the authors’ indicate that the media chooses its stories that will air

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Comedian Jon Stewart

    782 Words  | 2 Pages

    Comedian Jon Stewart gives a speech on the Daily Show during the “Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear”. He wants the viewers of the Daily Show to realize the difference between the real and fake threats and to take a humorous perspective on most of America’s “problems”. Stewart also emphasizes to his audience not to take every person on the media by his word and not to overreact to everything they hear. He uses metaphors, comparisons, and hypothetical examples to get his point across.

    Read More

  • The Star Spangled Banner Persuasive Speech

    805 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Land of the free and the home of the brave.” This line has represented the United States for decades. These words were captured in The Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key and since 1913, the United States has adopted The Star-Spangled Banner as its national anthem. We have used the Red, White, and Blue as one of our nation’s symbols. It has fifty stars, to represent the number of states we have in our Union. The military pledges its allegiance to the flag and the country which it represents at all costs. We are the land of the free and the home of the brave, and we are proud to show it.

    Read More

  • A Brief Narrative of the Case and Trial of John Peter Zenger by Hamilton

    858 Words  | 2 Pages

    When discussing the media, we must search back to its primal state the News Paper. For it was the News paper and its writers that forged ahead and allowed freedoms for today’s journalism on all fronts, from the Twitter accounts to the daily gazettes all must mark a single event in the evolution of media in respects to politics and all things shaping. Moving on in media history, we began to see a rapid expansion around 1990. With more than 50% of all American homes having cable TV access, newspapers in every city and town with major newspaper centers reaching far more than ever before. Then the introduction of the Internet; nothing would ever be the same.

    Read More

  • The Perpetuation of Racism in Canada by the Mainstream News Media

    3978 Words  | 8 Pages

    38 Wilson, Clint and Felix Gutierrez. Race, Multiculturalism, and the Media: From Mass to Class Communication. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1995: 44.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Media Has Gone Downhill

    950 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is not uncommon to hear people complaining about what they hear on the news. Everyone knows it and the media themselves knows it as well. Some of the most renowned journalists have even covered the the media’s issues in detail. Biased news outlets have flooded everyday news. We find that journalism’s greatest problems lie in the media’s inability for unbiased reporting, the tendency to use the ignorance of their audience to create a story, and their struggles to maintain relevance.

    Read More

  • Lyndon B Johnson Argumentative Essay

    910 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, is not one of the most well-known presidents to have ever served in office though he did do some good things during his presidency. The vice president’s journey to the presidency began after the assassination of the beloved president, John F. Kennedy. Before serving as president, he was the youngest Senator to ever serve as a majority leader and he sat in the House of Representatives. Although Johnson served two terms as president, he only ran in one election because of the death of Kennedy. However, the one election he ran in, he won in by a landslide (Ridings & Melver 231). Lyndon B Johnson, the Democratic president, who served from 1963-1969, might have been infamous for the decisions he made during the Vietnam War, but his Great Society and Civil Rights Act helped shape the nation in a good way.

    Read More

  • Influence Of The Movie Good Night, And Good Luck

    700 Words  | 2 Pages

    Media is a powerful tool that can be used to influence the majority and the distortion of truth in media has a rippling effect that may prove to be dangerous. Good Night, and Good Luck is an extravagant film that exposes the truth of media. The main protagonist in the film, Edward Murrow, makes attempts to caution the audience about the power of media. In the film, Murrow says “We have a built in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information; our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses, and recognize that television, in the main, is being use to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture, too late.” (Heslov & Clooney, 2005) Which is

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Lyndon B Johnson's Inaugural Address

    776 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the opening of his speech he effectively placed grief in our hearts by stating that there was “long suffering men and women” that tried to calmly protest and “were brutally assaulted” and a preacher was even slain. When this was said, congress began to sympathize with him. He too used parallelism by linking “Lexington and Concord” with the events that transpired “last week in Selma, Alabama” referring to the violence that erupted that day and successfully changed the viewpoint of Congress. He also used the method of allusion by referencing the American Revolution. Additionally, he used diction repetitively throughout by choosing similar words to make it seem like everyone’s problem. For example he said “Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth” and by using phrases such as “we” and “our,” he addresses the concern as a collective issue. Similarly, by repeating “our” several times, he is using anaphora to emphasize his

    Read More

  • Biracial Identity Analysis

    1974 Words  | 4 Pages

    “The media serve as a tool that people use to define, measure, and understand American society” (Deo et al., 149). Thinking of the media as a tool for the American people also extends into the realm of race and ethnicity. The United States has had a long and difficult history pertaining to the racial and ethnic identities of the many different people that reside within and outside of it’s borders. That history is still being created and this country still struggles with many of the same problems that have plagued this area since before the founding of the U.S. As stated above, the popular media has a large impact on the way that race and ethnicity are understood by people, especially when considering the prevalence of segregation in the U.S.

    Read More

  • Race and Ethnicity in America

    863 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the greatest exports of American culture is American media. American media is one of the most widely distributed and consumed cultural forms from the United States. This means that not only do Americans consume large quantities of their own media, but many other countries in the world consume American media, too. People in other countries will not interpret or understand the media in precisely the same ways that Americans will and do, nonetheless, many aspects of American culture and American reality are communicated to numerous viewers as part of the content in the media. The media is an important tool in the discussion of race, class, and gender in America. It takes a savvy viewer to discriminate between and understand what media accurately represents reality, what media does not, or which aspects of experience are fictionalized, and which elements ...

    Read More

  • The Powerful Effect of Fake News

    2875 Words  | 6 Pages

    From the beginning days of the printing press to the always evolving internet of present day, the media has greatly evolved and changed over the years. No one can possibly overstate the influential power of the new media of television on the rest of the industry. Television continues to influence the media, which recently an era of comedic television shows that specialize in providing “fake news” has captivated. The groundbreaking The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and its spin-off The Colbert Report have successfully attracted the youth demographic and have become the new era’s leading political news source. By parodying news companies and satirizing the government, “fake news” has affected the media, the government, and its audience in such a way that Bill Moyers has claimed “you simply can’t understand American politics in the new millennium without The Daily Show,” that started it all (PBS).

    Read More

  • Television and Media - Relationship between Society and the Media

    2949 Words  | 6 Pages

    This essay will show, unfortunately, that our democracy is not as healthy as it potentially could be because of television and print’s inadequate coverage of politics and the public’s resultant frustration and lack of knowledge. The reason this occurs is not because the media is trying to restrict our role in the government, but because it has other agendas to consider, such as producing maximum profits. Also, the media can take its obligatory role, often referred to as the “fourth estate,” to an extreme. John McManus, a former newspaper reporter and current professor at Santa Clara University researching the social responsibility of news media, specifically uses this term in his book Market-Driven Journalism: Let the Citizen Beware? to explain the media’s ideal role as the fourth branch of the government. The media is meant to participate in our system of checks and balances and check the government to ensure that it does not withhold too much power from the people. However, this can pose a problem if the media tries too hard to keep a check on the government and ends up transcending its role as the fourth estate and becoming cynical of the government. These market-driven characteristics and overzealous tendencies are conveyed in the media’s choice and presentation of language.

    Read More

  • The Relationship Between Journalism And Politics

    1070 Words  | 3 Pages

    The media is sometimes called the “Fourth Estate” because of its influence in shaping the course of politics and public opinion. Some people are influenced by what they read or hear and others are not. There is a well-known psychological process called selective attention. Wilson, Dilulio, and Bose define it as “paying attention only to those news stories with which one already agrees.” (290)

    Read More

More about Persuasive Essay On John Stewart Speech

Open Document