As documented in a Media Reality Check last week, in interviewing Attorney General John Ashcroft, all three morning shows hit him only with questions from the left about his abridgement of civil rights.
On December 3, however, MRC analyst Brain Boyd observed that Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, managed to question the sanctity of putting civil rights ahead of all other concerns.
Check out the line of questioning he delivered to ACLU President Nadine Strossen after he let her outline her complaints:
Stewart: See, here's what I don't understand, doesn't free speech come with some responsibility? Isn't there something that people have to be responsible for their own behavior. If they are discussing terrorist acts what would be the problem with surveying for that?
Strossen: Well, you have the right to talk about terrorism, in fact, I hope all of us are. We're talking about-
Stewart: We're talking about it in a theoretical way how to counter it, not what our next target is.
Strossen: And that's why these surveillance techniques are as ineffective as they are violative of individual rights. If the program is searching out anytime the word “terrorist” comes up, I think there are going to be a million innocent conversations for everyone that might be suspicious and that's why, interestingly enough, law enforcement officials are saying these kind of dragnet techniques that we're using are really just a waste of resources.
Stewart: They talk about the 5,000 people that are going to be questioned.
Strossen: Exactly, that's what I was going to say.
Stewart: Now that doesn't sound like a waste of time to me because it, it seems like, well, let's take it in a different direction. When they were trying to effectively curtail the Mafia, chances are they used the RICO, I guess, Act, for racketeering etc., but chances are they talked to mostly Italian-Americans. Now is that racial profiling or is that perhaps an evening at the Olive Garden. (Laughter) No, I don't know what I'm talking about. Is that racial profiling?
Strossen: In this context it really is, because the only criterion, well wait, it's not only racial, it's also age and gender. It's 5,000, you said people, Jon, but 5, 000 men between the ages of 18 and 33 who come from certain countries that are suspected of having terrorist activities.
Stewart: So it's already winnowed down quite a bit.
Strossen: Not very much. And the government says that these people, they have no basis for believing that any of them have any knowledge of the terrorists, let alone any-
Stewart: Were they randomly picked out of a hat?
Strossen: No. They were picked only because of the age, the gender and the countries they came from.
Stewart: Are there only 5,000 people in this country in between the ages of-
Strossen: That come from those countries, that have entered, I'm sorry, in the last two years on non-immigrant visas. But they entered lawfully.
Stewart: Those were eight different criterion you cited. The age, the sex, the country, when they came into the country, on what type of visa they entered into the country, that's, I mean that to me sounds like more than just racial profiling.
The next time Strossen appears on a morning show we can compare her treatment to how Stewart challenged her.
(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)
