Is Fake News Better Than Real News?

[struggle4progress]

May 15, 2005
By Paul Gessing

<snip> Stewart has often criticized cable news in general, leveling his blows through skits like “Great Moments in Punditry as Read by Children” in which six and seven year old kids crack up laughing at the silliness of Paul Begala, Robert Novak, and Anne Coulter. In another episode Stewart interviewed CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and did more to illustrate the mainstream media’s poor coverage of the Iraq war than all of the TV pundits and “critical self-analysis” combined. When Stewart accused Blitzer’s CNN and the mainstream media in general of “groupthink” and then more appropriately “mental retardation,” Blitzer had no response and could not tell Stewart anything that would improve his coverage next time politicians start beating the war drums.

Although 2004 had already been a good year for The Daily Show, in October Stewart cemented his place in television lore when he courageously appeared on Crossfire with Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. Rather than sucking up to the two pundits of whom Stewart had been critical of in the past, he had the guts to tell the them straight to their faces that their show’s “partisan hackery was hurting America.” Stewart sparred with the bow-tie wearing Carlson throughout their discussion and wrapped the love-fest up by calling Carlson a “dick.” Stewart was vindicated this January when Crossfire was cancelled.

Better still; in canceling the show CNN President Jon Klein called for his network to “get back to more round-the-clock news coverage and avoid the partisan bickering that had come to dominate much of its programming.” Klein went on to say, “I guess I come down more firmly in the Jon Stewart camp, I doubt that when the President sits down with his advisers they scream at him to keep up to date on all of the issues, I don’t know why we don’t treat the audience with the same respect.” <snip>

Even more surprising than the education advantage among Stewart’s audience is the disparity in knowledge of current events. According to a 2004 study by the University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey, young viewers of The Daily Show are more likely to answer questions about politics correctly than those who don’t. According to the same study, Daily Show viewers have greater political knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers – even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration.” <snip>

http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/001056.html

[atommom]

1. If it's fake news from TDS, then yes!

:yourock:

[kaygore]

2. Stewart challenges us to think

He does it with humor for the most part.

[kliljedahl]

3. "young viewers of The Daily Show "?

I'm 56 years old & never miss it. :wtf:


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[A Simple Game]

4. Fake news?

Most of the news on the Daily Show is not fake.

My view of the news on the Daily Show is that it is shown from the perspective of a sober person viewing a bar full of drunks. The news like the drunks is real, but so stupid you have to laugh.

[damntexdem]

5. Anyone who regularly watches just cannot doubt that it is.

Stewart's fake news comes from understandings based in reality; the rest of the media's spin does not.

I don't say that being better-apprised of politics is due to watching TDS, because the audience is self-selected: smarter, more-knowledgeable people watch Jon Stewart. But some of the knowledge does come from being alerted not just to news but to ways of looking at the news by TDS fakery.

Satire, and sometimes slapstick, can be very good reporting.