"The Daily Show' approach worth emulating

Bill O'Reilly thinks I'm a "stoned slacker," and if you also watch The Daily Show, welcome to the club. That's how the Fox News host described the audience of Jon Stewart's "dopey show" in a Sept. 17 interview, during which O'Reilly also advocated a boycott of France, whined that John Kerry appeared on Stewart's show instead of his own and -- never one to let facts stand in his way -- claimed that 87 percent of Stewart's audience watches while intoxicated.

Fox News' casual relationship with the truth aside, even Ted Koppel has voiced concerns about the rise of late-night comedy as a source of news. At the Democratic National Convention, he said, "A lot of television viewers -- more, quite frankly, than I'm comfortable with -- get their news from the comedy channel on a program called The Daily Show."

Much of this unease stems from a Pew Research Center study that reported that "21 [percent] of people under age 30 say they regularly learn about the campaign and the candidates from comedy shows like ... The Daily Show." However, a new study by Penn's Annenberg Public Policy Center shows that those who watch The Daily Show, on average, know more about the presidential campaign than even "national news viewers and newspaper readers."

So while Bill O'Reilly may disagree, I would argue that The Daily Show is the most intelligent and worthwhile cable news program now airing. The Annenberg study doesn't say why Daily Show viewers are so well-informed, but I propose that it is both because the show satirizes campaign narratives (i.e., Bush is dumb and Kerry is an elitist flip-flopper) and because, as "fake news," it can abandon the artificial ideal of journalistic balance.

First, Stewart's satire is uniquely critical. Dannagal Young, who conducted the Annenberg study, said in an interview, "While Leno and Letterman are trying to distill the news of the day and present it at its funniest in a way that everyone will understand, The Daily Show is more likely to present a segment that will satirize the news norms that created those caricatures in the first place." In other words, while other comedians base their humor on the dominant campaign narratives, Stewart earns laughs by satirizing these stereotypes.

These narratives too often serve as the prisms through which media view and report campaign news, as in 2000 when the themes were "Bush the Dunce" and "Gore the Liar," both of which were misleading. And thus, by deconstructing these narratives rather than operating within them, The Daily Show prepares its viewers to critically evaluate campaign reporting -- better, even, than other cable news outlets.

Second, the journalistic ideal of balance, while noble, too often gets in the way of truthfully reporting a story. Framing news in terms of two supposedly equal but opposing viewpoints ignores the reality that the facts are not always balanced between parties, and thus legitimizes factually inaccurate opinions. Daily Show "correspondent" Rob Corddry's satiric definition of a reporter's role makes these problems clear: "My job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other." Instead of repeating each side's claims, mainstream media need to start reporting the reality.

For example, no matter what the Left says, the expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban does not legalize automatic weapons. And no matter what the Right says, Kerry doesn't favor arming our troops with spitballs -- he's proposed doubling our special forces, and many of the Cold War weapons systems he's criticized for voting against were also opposed by the former President Bush and his then-secretary of defense, Dick Cheney.

Some groups -- like the Annenberg Center's www.factcheck.org -- are actually sorting out the spin. But if they can investigate candidate claims, certainly the task is not beyond the major networks' ability. That they choose not to is a national outrage. And thus, those like me who prefer factual journalism to balanced journalism have been abandoned by the networks. Instead, we watch the fake news of The Daily Show, which avoids the pitfalls of "balance" by using satire as its basic form.

To prefer facts to balance is not to argue that news should have a political point of view. As Stewart has said, "The point of view of this show is we're passionately opposed to bullshit." The ideal of balance has made journalists too timid to call lies, deception and spin what they are. And even if it is not balanced, The Daily Show is still fair. The Annenberg research showed that, during the study period, the number of jokes specifically targeting candidates balanced equally along party lines. The show has hosted Bill Clinton and John Kerry, but also John McCain, Bush-Cheney '04 Campaign Chairman Mark Mark Racicot, and White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett.

Journalists must abandon the broad campaign narratives and artificial attempts at balance that obscure the facts, which are, after all, what journalists should be reporting. But in the meantime, let's watch The Daily Show. After all, as Jon Stewart himself has said, Fox shouldn't have a monopoly on fake news.

Kevin Collins is a junior Political Science major from Milwaukee. ...And Justice For All appears on Tuesdays.

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