Jun012007
How Much News is in the Daily Show’s Fake News?
Filed Under Late Night, Satire
A little while back, a blogger for CBS News talked about “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” being no substitute for regular news. It’s been funny to watch the mainstream media clamor to attach meaning to both shows - despite any disavowals from Jon Stewart & Co. It’s a little natural that perhaps a little professional jealousy will rise up to try and tear down what they themselves have built up.
CBS’s blogger takes issue with “Daily” and “Colbert” as news sources because when viewers were tested on knowledge of news facts they knew less than most of other news sources, using the same Pew Research Center study that many use to prove the satire shows’ importance. One of the things that he neglect to mention is that the people who get their news from comedy show is taken in the most broad way possible. They’re counting SNL, Leno and Letterman in there. Though there’s definitely political jokes in there, there’s very little news content. So to dismiss the informative qualities of “The Daily Show” when it’s paired with many less-than-news sources isn’t very fair. I’m pretty sure that if you test Daily Show or Colbert viewers on their own, the results would be much higher on the scale.
Particularly because, as far as news content, The Daily Show was studied by Indiana University and found to be as substantive as regular network news. And that is why some people probably can and do use it as a sources. I’ve said this before, but for a joke to land, you can’t let the spin and the falsehood be the set-up. You have to use facts. Truth. So much of network news has been simply presentation without critical thinking, which allows the spin to drag their news content down.
The CBS post closes with by trying to parallel the Daily Show with dessert after a meal of regular news, but with the amount of spin and obfuscation that’s seeping into our news, what the Daily Show really is is the menu that tells you what the hell you just ate.
Share:
comedy.com |
Digg
|
del.icio.us
|
Stumble It!
You may have forgotten, but “the real news” is discovered by and reported the best by newspapers. Comedy shows often misconstrue the facts for a joke, and shouldn’t even be compared to a Wall Street Journal, Telegraph, or Yomiuri Shimbun.