Did Jon Stewart fail to put a 'dent' in Fox News?

Fox News chief Roger Ailes gave the Hollywood Reporter some gracious quotes about Jon Stewart on the eve of his departure from "The Daily Show."

"He's a brilliant comedian. He's actually a very nice guy, and I saw him with his kids on the street. He's a good father," said Ailes.

As any casual "Daily Show" viewer well knows, Stewart regularly skewered Fox News.

He took on star Fox News talent Bill O'Reilly over whether white privilege existed; he hammered the network for its coverage of Ferguson, Missouri, its coverage of climate change, its coverage of Malaysia Airline Flight 370 and its coverage of just about everything else. And Fox News sometimes prompted Stewart to ditch the funnies and get downright grave.

In a memorable August 2014 riff about the network's Ferguson coverage, Stewart played clips of Fox News talent lamenting that the story had taken on a racial tone.

Stewart noted a case of racial profiling that he'd witnessed in his own professional life, and thundered, "That happens all the time, all of it. Race is there and it is a constant. You're tired of hearing about it. Imagine how f__ exhausting it is living it." He hectored again this week in responding to an allegation on Fox News that he was a propagandist.

The brilliance of Stewart's Fox News critique stemmed from archiving and watching the network. He and his staff had such a command of the Fox News product that whenever a prominent host unleashed some critique of some politician or ideology, Stewart & Co. could reach back and find a clip or five that exposed a double standard.

See this episode from December as a prime example, in which Stewart cataloged the network's coverage of unrest in Ferguson after a St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict Officer Darren Wilson, who had killed 18-year-old Michael Brown.

"A gentleman on Fox News said that black people have been convinced by a network of shrewd propagandists that they are somehow victims, and that is wrong — to agitate a population, to scare them utilizing all the tools of modern communication — graphics, music, etc. — to stoke these people into a resentful frenzy. Fox News feels that's just damaging to this great nation and tears at our very fabric. I can't imagine anyone would do such a thing — just roll the [expletive] tape," said Stewart, who then proceeded to show instances in which Fox News did precisely the same thing.

Armed with such videotape, Stewart's job as comedian was perfunctory. He'd just document what Fox News is saying now, and what it said before — all tossed with some wise cracks here and there.

As for the impact of all this criticism, Ailes scoffs: "He's been after us for years. Occasionally we pay attention. We think he's funny. We never took it seriously and he never made a dent in us."

True! Fox News's status atop the cable-news ratings dates back to January 2002, when it eclipsed CNN and never looked back.

Stewart's 16-plus-year tenure as "Daily Show" host overlaps with all of those dominant years.

"He's feeling unrewarded because Fox News beats him on the amount of money we make, on ratings and on popularity. I'm sure it's very depressing when he sits home at night and worries about it. We never did," said Ailes, who also said that Stewart "has a bitter view of the world."

A better guess is that Stewart — and other critics of Fox News — not only failed to put a dent in the network, but also they may have driven viewers to it. At the same time, Stewart undoubtedly drew audience from hitting Fox News so frequently.

That's what you call a win-win for these two cable networks and a lose-lose for a political ecosystem in which people don't listen to one another. And even though Stewart may not have hurt Fox News's ratings, he certainly helped mold a deep skepticism toward the Fox News product among media elites, a good number of whom saw Fox News exclusively through Stewart's clips. Ailes & Co. will tell you they don't care about those media elites, but they do.

Trevor Noah, Stewart's successor at "The Daily Show," has said he'll move the show away from an obsession with the "fair and balanced" network:

"Now you've got the Gawkers, the BuzzFeeds. The way people are drawing their news is soundbites and headlines and click-bait links has changed everything," said Noah at the recent Television Critics Association press tour.

"The biggest challenge is going to be an exciting one I'm sure is how are we going to bring all of that together looking at it from a bigger lens as opposed to just going after one source — which was historically Fox News."

Noah may think better of such lofty talk once he measures the public response to a segment on journalistic ethics at Gawker.