[vaksel]

1. According to a study, Daily Show viewers are more informed about current events than those that watch FOX, CNN, etc.

2. They are a comedy show, so it's ok to do that(even though they don't abuse that). FOX on the other hand does more than that, and they are supposed to be a news channel. i.e. take that Hannity clip from a few days ago: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-september-9-2010/are-y... (fast forward to 5 minutes)

3. Everything doesn't have to be objective, just because you have a scientist on talking about evolution, doesn't mean you have to bring in someone who wants to talk about creationism. This whole "balanced" reporting that you want is one of the reasons all these fringe nut jobs get their legitimacy. "Of course the president was born in Kenya....I saw someone say that on a news show".

[DanielBMarkham]

According to a study, Daily Show viewers are more informed about current events than those that watch FOX, CNN, etc.

Would love to see a source for that statement. If true, it's very interesting.

[vaksel]

here you go(2nd graph):

http://people-press.org/report/319/public-knowledge-of-curre...

[DanielBMarkham]

Thanks! Cool stuff!

Looking at the numbers, though, I'm not sure it says what you think it says. My impression is that it says that people who are interested in politics -- political humor from Jon, major newspaper websites, O'Reilly Factor watchers -- know more than folks who just passively consume news every now and then (Fox News Channel). That's the way the data looks to me, anyway.

[vaksel]

yes but out of those who actively consume this sort of news, Daily Show has higher numbers.

[DanielBMarkham]

I need to go back and study it some more, because from the abstract at the bottom, titled "Knowledge Levels by News Source", The Daily Show/Colbert Report looks like it's tied or bested in almost every category by folks who read newspaper websites. In fact, if you call the margin of error around 4%, there's really not much difference in the top several items. And I can't believe something like this would be accurate down to 1 or 2 percentage points or less.

[mkr-hn]

http://articles.cnn.com/2004-09-28/entertainment/comedy.poli...