The Daily Show has often run as a 30-minute Bush joke over the last few years. This study used Bush-centric stories as points of comparison. Is it any surprise Jon Stewart won out?
this is more a condemnation of the crap network news has become than an endorsement of using the Daily Show as primary news source. Plus, their methodology was kinda skewed towards a measure friendly to the daily show (that is, raw time), and not a measure of how they covered individual issues. Granted, that would have been difficult, but still…
That is, a 1-minute Cheney pacemaker joke would count as more substantive than a 30-second news report mentioning that the VP was in the hospital for heart problems, even if the same factual information was conveyed. Hell, a 10-minute joke about Kucinich’s ears would count as 10 minutes of “substantive coverage.” And when the daily show does the usual “quote from someone, quote from someone, fake ending quote that is clearly ridiculous, pause for laughter” thing, that entire period probably counted as substantive.
I still watch the daily show every day, but i’m not gonna ditch NPR and my online news for it. I suppose network news has been irrelevant to me for years now, anyways, though
Anton said,
October 5, 2006 at 11:47 am
The Daily Show has often run as a 30-minute Bush joke over the last few years. This study used Bush-centric stories as points of comparison. Is it any surprise Jon Stewart won out?
yoni said,
October 6, 2006 at 9:52 am
this is more a condemnation of the crap network news has become than an endorsement of using the Daily Show as primary news source. Plus, their methodology was kinda skewed towards a measure friendly to the daily show (that is, raw time), and not a measure of how they covered individual issues. Granted, that would have been difficult, but still…
That is, a 1-minute Cheney pacemaker joke would count as more substantive than a 30-second news report mentioning that the VP was in the hospital for heart problems, even if the same factual information was conveyed. Hell, a 10-minute joke about Kucinich’s ears would count as 10 minutes of “substantive coverage.” And when the daily show does the usual “quote from someone, quote from someone, fake ending quote that is clearly ridiculous, pause for laughter” thing, that entire period probably counted as substantive.
I still watch the daily show every day, but i’m not gonna ditch NPR and my online news for it. I suppose network news has been irrelevant to me for years now, anyways, though