The President tries to educate Chuck Todd...

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45. You are Welcome, Cha

Interesting...from Wiki.

Television ratings from 2008 show that the program generally has 1.45 to 1.6 million viewers nightly, a high figure for cable television.[90] In demographic terms, the viewership is skewed to a relatively young and well educated audience compared to traditional news shows. A 2004 Nielsen Media Research study commissioned by Comedy Central put the median age at 35. During the 2004 U.S. presidential election, the show received more male viewers in the 18–34 year old age demographic than Nightline, Meet the Press, Hannity & Colmes and all of the evening news broadcasts.[91] Because of this, commentators such as Howard Dean and Ted Koppel posit that Stewart serves as a real source of news for young people, regardless of his intentions.[92][93]

The show's writers reject the idea that The Daily Show has become a source of news for young people. Stewart argues that Americans are living in an "age of information osmosis" in which it is close to impossible to gain one's news from any single source, and says that his show succeeds comedically because the viewers already have some knowledge about current events. "Our show would not be valuable to people who didn't understand the news because it wouldn't make sense," he argues. "We make assumptions about your level of knowledge that... if we were your only source of news, you would just watch our show and think, 'I don't know what's happening.'"[94]

A 2006 study published by Indiana University tried to compare the substantive amount of information of The Daily Show against prime time network news broadcasts, and concluded that when it comes to substance, there is little difference between The Daily Show and other news outlets. The study contended that, since both programs are more focused on the nature of "infotainment" and ratings than on the dissemination of information, both are broadly equal in terms of the amount of substantial news coverage they offer.[95]
SNIP:
As the lines between comedy show and news show have blurred, Jon Stewart has come under pressure in some circles to engage in more serious journalism. Tucker Carlson and Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead have chastised Stewart for criticizing politicians and newspeople in his solo segments and then, in interviews with the same people, rarely taking them to task face-to-face. In 2004, Winstead expressed a desire for Stewart to ask harder satirical questions, saying, "When you are interviewing a Richard Perle or a Kissinger, if you give them a pass, then you become what you are satirizing. You have a war criminal sitting on your couch—to just let him be a war criminal sitting on your couch means you are having to respect some kind of boundary."[96] She has argued that The Daily Show's success and access to the youth vote should allow Stewart to press political guests harder without fearing that they will not return to the show.[97] In 2010, Winstead had changed her views, commenting that since 2004, Stewart did some of the hardest-hitting interviews on TV.[98] Stewart said in 2003 that he does not think of himself as a social or media critic and rejects the idea that he has any journalistic role as an interviewer.[99]

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Show