preview.tinyurl.com/4nkuwn -> pewresearch.org/pubs/829/the-daily-show-journalism-satire-or-just-laughs
Share From: To: Send When Americans last year were asked to name the journalist they most admired, showing up at No. Jon Stewart, host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central and former master of ceremonies at Academy Award shows, tied in the rankings with anchormen Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and cable host Anderson Cooper^ 1 Jon Stewart Are Americans confused? What is Stewart doing on his program, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," that might cause people to consider him a journalist? How is the show similar to, and different from, what people get from the mainstream press? Beyond that, who -- and what -- gets skewered by Stewart and company, and who does not? For answers, the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism studied the content of "The Daily Show" for an entire year (2007), compared its news agenda with that of the more traditional news media, examined the lineup of guests and segments and tried to place the program into some kind of media context^ 2 The results reveal a television program that draws on the news events of the day but picks selectively among them -- heavily emphasizing national politics and ignoring other news events entirely. In that regard, "The Daily Show" closely resembles the news agenda of a number of cable news programs as well as talk radio. The program also makes heavy use of news footage, often in a documentary way that employs archival video to show contrast and contradiction, even if the purpose is satirical rather than reportorial. At other times, the show also blends facts and fantasy in a way that no news program, one hopes, ever would. In addition, "The Daily Show" not only assumes, but even requires, previous and significant knowledge of the news on the part of viewers if they want to get the joke. And, in 2007 at least, the joke was more often on the Bush administration and its fellow Republicans than on those from the liberal side of the aisle. Among the study's findings: * The program's clearest focus is politics, especially in Washington. US foreign affairs, largely dominated by the Bush administration's policies in Iraq, Washington politics and government accounted for nearly half (47%) of the time spent on the program. Overall, "The Daily Show" news agenda is quite close to those of cable news talk shows. In all, segments about the press and news media accounted for 8% of program time. That is more than double the amount of coverage of media in the mainstream press overall during the same period. In 2007, for example, major events such as the tragic Minneapolis bridge collapse were never discussed. And the shootings at Virginia Tech, the most covered story within a given week in 2007 by the overall press, received only a cursory mention. From July 1 through November 1, Stewart's humor targeted Republicans more than three times as often as Democrats. The Bush administration alone was the focus of almost a quarter (22%) of the segments in this time period. But our subjective sense from viewing the segments is that Republicans faced harsher criticism during their interviews with Stewart. Whether this is because the show is simply liberal or because the Republicans control the White House is harder to pin down. Stewart has always insisted that his show isn't journalism and given its comedic core, its blurring of truth and fiction, and its ignoring of many major events, that is true in a traditional sense. But it's also true that, at times, "The Daily Show" aims at more than comedy. In its choice of topics, its use of news footage to deconstruct the manipulations by public figures and its tendency toward pointed satire over playing just for laughs, "The Daily Show" performs a function that is close to journalistic in nature -- getting people to think critically about the public square. In that sense, it is a variation of the tradition of Russell Baker, Art Hoppe, Art Buchwald, HL Mencken and other satirists who once graced the pages of American newspapers. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in April 2007, 16% of Americans said they regularly watched "The Daily Show" or the Comedy Central spin-off, "The Colbert Report." Those numbers are comparable to some major news programs. For instance, 17% said they regularly watched Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," and 14% watched PBS' "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" regularly^ 3 The survey also suggests that viewers of the show are highly informed, an indication that "The Daily Show" is not their lone source of news. Regular viewers of "The Daily Show" and the Colbert Report were most likely to score in the highest percentile on knowledge of current affairs^ 4 "The Daily Show", which launched in 1996, now has an average audience of about 18 million^ 5 By comparison, Fox News' primetime show "Hannity & Colmes" had an average audience of 19 million in the first quarter of 2008, and CNN's highest rated show, "Election Center," captured an average of 12 million viewers^ 6 Stewart became host of the Show in 1999 and also serves as a writer and co-executive producer. Structurally, "The Daily Show" combines elements of both traditional news shows and late night variety programs. Two commercial segments divide the 30 minute show into three distinct parts. Typically the first segment consists of Stewart's monologue, which often uses video and audio clips. The second segment usually brings in correspondents who do skits, or staged interviews with Stewart. The third, and final, act of the show consists of a guest interview. Guests range from celebrities to historians and politicians^ 7 What's on -- and not on -- "The Daily Show" Overall, range of topics on "The Daily Show" is somewhat more limited than the mainstream press. Yet in many ways the similarities between the comedy show and the news media are as striking as the differences. Both "The Daily Show" and the press generally, for instance, had the same No. It consumed 17% of the time on "The Daily Show" and 19% in the press overall. Politics, particularly the race for president, was the No. And in both the mainstream press and "The Daily Show", the top three topic areas commanded the lion's share of time -- 47% on "The Daily Show" and 40% in the mainstream press. "The Daily Show" is more focused on political matters and is more Washington-oriented than the press overall. "The Daily Show" was also more interested in lifestyle news, celebrities, and talking about the media itself. In contrast, the mainstream news media focused more on such matters as foreign events not associated with the United States, crime, disasters, health, business and the economy. In general, it is probably fair to say that the purview of the comedy show is more limited. The top six topics on "The Daily Show", for instance, made up 69% of all the time, while the top six topics in the media generally filled 60% of its newshole. One can see this narrow focus even more clearly by looking not at the broad topics covered but more specifically on the exact stories. As an example, the presidential campaign and the policy debate about the war in Iraq together added up to a quarter of the time spent on "The Daily Show" (26%) for the year^ 8 This was significantly more than in the mainstream press, where the two stories commanded 18% of the newshole studied during the same time period. Figure To illustrate that more limited range, it is helpful to note the subjects that "The Daily Show" de-emphasized -- or completely ignored -- in 2007. As Stewart described it to the host of PBS' "Bill Moyers' Journal", "we feel no obligation to follow the news cyclebecause we're not journalists^ 9" Looking at which topics the show does and does not discuss also provides insight into editorial limitations on a program that relies so heavily on satire and comedy. While politicians and celebrities are easy to lampoon, such an approach is often out of bounds when it comes to tragedies and disasters. The August 2 bridge collapse in Minneapolis that killed 13 people accounted for 55% of the mainstream media's coverage that day. And the single largest story for any given week in 2007 -- the Virginia Tec...
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