The Daily Show, a wildly popular program on the U.S. Comedy Central network, offers an alternative to the mainstream news media – “alternative” because it lampoons the news rather than reports it.
The show won television’s Peabody awards for its 2000 and 2004 U.S. elections coverage. By early 2008, its satirical newslike reports on public figures and current events were reaching an average audience of 1.8 million. Compare those figures to Fox News’ primetime Hannity & Colmes at 1.9 million and CNN’s highest-rated show, Election Center, at 1.2 million, and you’ll start to appreciate the comedy show’s hold on American audiences.
The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), which recently compared The Daily Show’s 2007 news content with that of mainstream news programs, concluded it “closely resembles the news agenda of a number of cable news programs as well as talk radio.”
PEJ also found the show might have a purpose beyond political humor. “The Daily Show performs a function that is close to journalistic in nature – getting people to think critically about the public square,” in the tradition of American newspaper satirists Art Buchwald and H.L. Mencken.
Like a news show, the program regularly lines up prominent elected officials for interviews, including presidential contenders Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, but any casual viewer quickly recognizes the main purpose of the show is comedy. Some major news stories are neglected, probably because host Jon Stewart and his crew couldn’t find anything funny to say about them.
Stewart, who maintains his program is solely for entertainment, rejects any journalistic responsibility. After being attacked on CNN’s Crossfire in 2004 for not asking tough questions in his interview with presidential candidate John Kerry, he seemed bewildered the CNN hosts were “look[ing] to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity.” Stewart said news programs, which exist to present news, were presenting theater at a time when journalists needed to take their profession more seriously.
Does the average viewer of The Daily Show know nothing about the global food crisis and everything about the “man-sized safe” in Vice President Cheney’s office? PEJ’s survey data suggest the show’s regular viewers are highly informed, perhaps the “most likely to score in the highest percentile on knowledge of current affairs.”
Obviously, Comedy Central is not these viewers’ only source of news, but it certainly takes their knowledge to a new and funnier level: The Daily Show continues to bill itself as “even better than being informed.”
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