But I digress! I too have noticed that while it remains a parody, The Daily Show is fast eclipsing other news programs as far as honesty, a sense of humor (severly lacking in the mainstream), and simply bringing up stories that aren’t covered (or aren’t covered extensively) by ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, etc. (The latter has its own unique problems, but I won’t go there now.)

Anyway, I like to use TDS as a legitimate news source, keeping in mind two very important caveats: (1) diversity is essential to getting the whole story – you can’t just get all your news from one source, and (2) it’s not, technically, y’know…”real.” That being said, I think TDS is about as good as it gets in the TV realm. (I really don’t like TV news in general; I prefer The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, the BBC, etc.)

All of which is to say that it’s pretty ironic (or just plain sad) that reality has surpassed satire to the point that making fun of current events isn’t even difficult in the least. The events just make fun of themselves.

The problem with that blog entry actually represents the problem that I have with people giving bloggers and TV shows the same status that traditional news media enjoys. There isn’t really a standard for accuracy that we expect of those comedy shows or bloggers.

Then again, the news division of NBC produced a two-hour program about the end of the show Friends, so it’s not like journalistic standards mean jack shit anymore. The only difference between someone going on Larry King to talk about their book and going on Letterman to promote their movie is that Letterman is more interesting to watch.

I’ll grant that increasingly people are getting their news from sources like The Daily Show. I would follow that up with a disclaimer that says that that’s nothing for the show or its viewers to be proud of.

But if The Daily Show is the most prominent television coverage of a major story, then they’re acting as a de facto news organization. This doesn’t mean the audience is lazy for getting some news from a comedy show, but that the news organizations aren’t doing their jobs.

The alleged decline in terrorism in 2003 was entirely a result of a decline in nonsignificant events.

Another curious feature of the latest report is that its catalogue of events does not list a single significant terrorist act occurring after Nov. 11, 2003, despite averaging 16 such acts a month in the rest of the year.

The representation that no terrorist events occurred after Nov. 11 is patently false. The bombings of the HSBC Bank, British Consulate, and Beth Israel and Neve Shalom synagogues in Istanbul by individuals associated with al Qaeda occurred on Nov. 20 and Nov. 15, respectively. Additionally, the report mentions the bombing of the Catholic Relief Services in Nasiriyah, Iraq, on Nov. 12 but somehow omits it from the official list of significant events.

So the record number of 169 significant international terrorist events for 2003 is undoubtedly an understatement. It is impossible to know if these and other terrorist events were left out of the State Department’s total of events.

I’ll grant that increasingly people are getting their news from sources like The Daily Show. I would follow that up with a disclaimer that says that that’s nothing for the show or its viewers to be proud of. How good does your satire have to be when your audience is completely ignorant of your source?