Feb 11, 2015 4 min read

If you were monitoring the Internet or cable news Tuesday night, it was hard to miss the virtually simultaneous bulletins Jon Stewart would be stepping down from Comedy Central’s satirical “The Daily Show” and Brian Williams is being suspended for six months without pay from “NBC Nightly News” after fabricating tales of Iraq War derring-do.

The synchronicity was striking and inevitably led some observers to point out the real newsman should be doing fake news, while the fake newsman could well be stepping aside because, as he noted in some interviews, he wants to immerse himself more in the real world, if not necessarily, in real news.

Nevertheless, it’s an indication of difficulties that confront television news, which is both plentifully abundant and facing dwindling audiences, that Stewart came to be so widely admired and, in fact, trusted, when many of the figures who sit at anchor desks and try to radiate gravitas are often viewed with wariness. In the 16 years he has been at the helm of “The Daily Show,” viewers looked to Stewart to help make sense of the day’s events in a way they once might have with Walter Cronkite or Chet Huntley. When a news event wandered in to the realm of the absurd, such as Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shooting a friend in the face in 2006 during a hunting trip, or when CNN’s obsessive coverage of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 last year included suggestions that a black hole might have swallowed the aircraft, Stewart could be relied upon to skewer the malefactors and leave viewers feeling that, yes, there was a voice of sanity still remaining in a television news universe that’s been overtaken with partisan shouting matches, red-carpet coverage and cat videos.

Stewart has aimed his barbs at figures from both sides of the aisle, from Cheney to Charles Rangel, the liberal New York-area congressman. And, it must be said Stewart has shown himself to be one of the best interviewers television has seen. Intellectually nimble and fast on his feet, he seems to have never pulled his punches, or fretted that a too-tough interview will reduce his access. When the story went around in the fall Stewart was approached to replace David Gregory as the moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” it didn’t seem far-fetched in the least.

Jason Zinoman, a New York Times media columnist, pointed out in the hours after Stewart’s surprise announcement “‘The Daily Show’ didn’t just offer insightful, cutting analysis, clever parody and often hard-hitting interviews with major newsmakers. For an entire generation, it became the news, except it could withstand the disruption of the Internet far better than the old media. If anything, the web only made ‘The Daily Show,’ with its short segments, more essential.”

One of Stewart’s frequent guests over the years has been Williams. Whether the NBC News anchor’s much-reported “memory lapse” about being in a helicopter that was shot down over Iraq in 2003 is a case of a fuzzy memory and the fog of war, or a fish story that grew with time from a minnow to a whale, it undeniably damaged Williams’ credibility. Whether taking a six-month break from the anchor desk is enough to restore it remains to be seen.

But even if it turns out Williams doesn’t come back and turns his energies to other pursuits – he has, by amusing coincidence, expressed an interest in comedy – he can be replaced and NBC’s nightly newscast will go on.

We’re not so sure, however, Stewart can be so easily replaced. He was a groundbreaker, an innovator and will be sorely missed.