The Most Important Show Ever™

There’s been plenty written about the blurring of the lines between entertainment and news, but the standard story only covers half of the picture. While news outlets move closer and closer to the hellish infotainment depicted in Network (if you haven’t seen it lately, rent it!), the flip side of this is that some entertainment shows are now filling in the void left by the news networks. Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about from an interview with Stephen Hayes from last night’s episode of The Daily Show :

Stewart : It seems like Bush has started a new doctrine, the Bush Doctrine…[which] sets the standard for preemption. Now the first time you exercise a new doctrine, wouldn’t you want to be very sure of yourself because that will set a standard, no?

Hayes : I think the idea behind the Bush doctrine is that if you support or harbor terrorists, we’re gonna come after you. We’ll consider you a hostile regime. I don’t think that frankly in the aftermath of September 11th, I really don’t think that’s an unreasonable doctrine.

Stewart : Here’s the problem. It’s not unreasonable, but it’s not he point. The point is…I’ll list you four things : developing weapons of mass destruction, inflammatory rhetoric against the United States, supporting and harboring terrorism, and oppression of their own people. Now here’s the problem with your doctrine. You can’t tell me what country I just named. And that’s a problem when you’re talking about war. You don’t know if I’m talking about Iraq, Iran, North Korea, or Sudan.

As the interview continued, Stewart elaborated on his point that the Bush Doctrine is meaningless if it isn’t applied evenly throughout the world and in the process ripping apart the argument that Stephen Hayes makes in his book, The Connection. Here we have a guy who’s written a book claiming that Saddam Hussein worked with al Qaeda, and he’s getting his ass handed to him by a comedian.

The way The Daily Show should work is that they mention a news item that we’re familiar with in order to set up some jokes. Unfortunately, with the news often beating stories to death rather than dig up new ones, The Daily Show is now in a situation in which it’s doing a better job covering important stories than the “real” news. For a good example of this, check out this post that compares the coverage of the State Department’s “mistake” on 2003’s global terrorism report card.

As far as I’m concerned, we should just stop calling The Daily Show “fake” news. True, they’re a comedy show, but how is what Jon Stewart (et. al.) doing much different than what what Bill O’Reilly does? The only big difference I see is that The Daily show mixes it’s news with comedy while the O’Reilly Factor mixes it’s news with bombast.

UPDATE : I posted this comment to E-Rock’s post that disagrees somewhat with my conclusions. Hopefully this clarifies things some :

I was exaggerating a bit, but I think that The Daily Show has eclipsed the real news in two important respects :

1) They’re providing better insight and raising more important points than the most of the news organizations that they parody. Could you imagine the questions that Jon Stewart asked last night coming out of the mouths of Larry King or Paula Zahn?

2) They’re providing more coverage for some actual news stories than the cable news networks. Take a look at the post I linked to and you’ll see that that the news outlets were mostly ignoring the huge news that the Bush Administration’s self-evaluation of their success on fighting terrorism was wrong.

Unlike Politically Incorrect, SNL, or The Onion, The Daily Show is finding itself in a position of “breaking” news not because they’re journalists, but because our media has been dropping the ball.


posted by greg on June 22, 2004 @ 1:55 am

13 comments

  1. Excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent, post, Greg. Right on the money.

    Comment by Mark Spittle — June 22, 2004 @ 11:06 am

  2. the daily show should turn into a 24 hour news network.

    Comment by tom — June 22, 2004 @ 11:59 am

  3. The Daily Show, June 21, 2004

    Those of you who watched tonight’s episode of The Daily Show, please share: was that not the most uncomfortable interview…

    Trackback by Lean Left — June 22, 2004 @ 12:31 pm

  4. They are in the tradition of the comedy/entertainment shows on the radio in the 60’s that managed to have a better grasp on the news and the actual zeitgeist of their times than the boring, establishment news.

    Comment by Amanda — June 22, 2004 @ 6:31 pm

  5. Yeah, I used to laugh when they mentioned their “World Headquarters in New York City” at the begininng of the news cast, but now it’s practically a statement of fact, since they’re braodcast overseas and in Canada (It comes on every night at midnight on Montreal channel 12).

    Comment by Joe — June 22, 2004 @ 7:48 pm

  6. 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. A quick LexisNexis search shows plenty of mainstream sources that covered the error, including the An LA Times piece from June 9th and a Washington Post piece from May 17, which, coincidentally, notes the November cutoff, calling the report faulty.

    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?

    Comment by E-Rock — June 23, 2004 @ 7:54 am

  7. The problem with bad speech is more speech, E-Rock. Start your own damn blog.

    Comment by Amanda — June 23, 2004 @ 11:10 am

  8. *I meant the solution to the problem of bad speech is more speech. I need to quit blasting the radio and typing at the same time.

    Comment by Amanda — June 23, 2004 @ 11:10 am

  9. I have a little blog of my own, but I know I’m no reporter. For the record, I read your blog today, via This Space for Rent, and I enjoyed what I read.

    Comment by E-Rock — June 23, 2004 @ 1:04 pm

  10. 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.

    Comment by greg — June 23, 2004 @ 2:12 pm

  11. To really be considered mainstream, Jon Stewart needs to write a book, and then do a whole episode where he’s the guest being interviewed about the book by Kilborn.

    Comment by Mark Spittle — June 23, 2004 @ 6:56 pm

  12. Actually, he HAS written at least one book, entitled “Naked Pictures of Famous People” and while I can’t vouch for its quality, if I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably pretty damn good. (If somewhat lacking in fulfilling the promise of the title - I guess I’ll have to keep looking for Charlize Theron somewhere else on the internet…)

    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.

    Comment by Ben S. — June 25, 2004 @ 7:45 am

  13. Coming soon to a bookstore near you:
    The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book) : A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction

    Comment by PMC — June 25, 2004 @ 2:13 pm

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