The daily show. Journalism or not?

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/829/the-daily-show-journalism-satire-or-just-laughs

This article does a fantastic job at defining exactly what the Daily Show hosted by Jon Stewart actually is. It first starts by stating that it is, in fact, not journalism. It even quotes Stewart as saying so. However, the show spends 47% of its time discussing politics, especially concerning Washington D.C, and our international affairs. The show draws its agenda off news stories, but neglects some of the less attractive stories. The story goes on to explain that this is much like cable news, who also must keep the news 'sexy' in order to sustain a viewer population. Even some stories are kept off the daily show that have a large public attraction. Sensitive events that are not morally correct to poke fun at, such as the Minneapolis Bridge collapse, and the Virginia Tech shootings, were never mentioned on this show.
I think the biggest point this article made was that all the jokes in the show are based around news stories. So it requires the active viewer to be previously informed about the current events if they want to understand the joke. So all in all, the Daly Show should not be ones primary source of news. It should however, be something to spark interest in the news, and something to be taken more seriously than stand up comedy.

Ryan Mead