Jon Stewart on the Media: ‘Are We Demanding Too Much of You?’

STEWART: “I’ve got a subject for you. Here’s a subject out of thin air.” (Applause)

OBAMA: “Go ahead.”

STEWART: “The media. The media. You love them, they love you. So, do you – is your frustration sometimes with the media – is the media myself included, are we focused on the wrong things? Are we demanding too much of you? Are we demanding too much of government? Are we too inflammatory? What is – what is your feeling on it?” 

OBAMA: “First of all, the media's, you know, a bunch of different medias. (Laughter) There are some that get on my nerves more than others. I think that's fair to say. You know, I think I'm most concerned about is not that it's unfair or that it's too tough on government because I think that that's what journalism and media is supposed to be doing. I think it gets distracted by shiny objects – (laughter) -- and doesn't always focus on the big, tough choices and decisions that have to be made and part of that is just the changing nature of technology. I mean, it is very hard now for folks to do an hour-long special on the other America, let's say or some of the other classic documentaries that were done a long time ago. It's tough to get everybody's attention focused in the same way and so, what that means is that on big tough issues, sometimes it's hard to get the entire nation's attention focused on it and we've been operating on sound bites, but look, part of my job and part of the job of everybody in the White House is, how do we adapt to this new environment? How are we more nimble? How are we dealing with social media? How do we deal more effectively?”