Jon Stewart really took it to Fox News and other News Corp-owned holdings for their continued defense of Rupert Murdoch in the phone hacking scandal, showing how hypocritical they are to pretend it's much ado about nothing, while going apeshit over NPR and the rapper Common being invited to the White House.
All in all, it's a story tailor-made for the 24-hour news culture: big personality, scandal, bribery, hacking, celebrities, death. But one network has been reticent to dumpster dive into any aspect of the story, other than their sheer disappointment at some of their competitors' behavior.STEVE DOOCY (7/15/2011): We've got some serious problems in this country right now. We are teetering on default. And what do they do? They talk about this!JON SCOTT (7/16/2011): Virtually every tabloid is guilty of some kind of offense.
7/15/2011:BOB DILENSCHNEIDER: Why are so many people piling on at this point? We know it's a hacking scandal. Shouldn't we get beyond it?
CAL THOMAS: The left has been out to get News Corp, especially Fox News Channel and the Murdoch family, for years.
BOB DILENSCHNEIDER: Murdoch, who owns it, has apologized, but for some reason, the public media keeps going over this again and again.
STEVE DOOCY: They're piling on.
CAL THOMAS: This is the biggest case of piling on since the last rugby game I saw.
Rugby?? By the way, if you're gonna kiss Rupert Murdoch's ass with a reference, at least call it Aussie rules football. Anyway, I thought you were going to say the biggest case of piling on since Common read a poem at the White House. (audience cheers)
....
Now, I'm not suggesting that you don't have the balls to confront Murdoch on this, I've seen you do it. When this scandal broke in 2009, Fox's Stu Varney yanked Murdoch's sorry Aussie ass out of Sun Valley, and laid the smackdown.
7/9/2009:STUART VARNEY: The story that is really buzzing all around the country, and certainly here in New York, is that the News of the World, a News Corporation newspaper in Britain, used....
RUPERT MURDOCH: No, I'm not... I'm not talking about that issue at all today. Sorry.
STUART VARNEY: OK. No worries, Mr. Chairman. That's fine with me.
Video and transcript below the fold.