It has long been touted that viewers of The Daily Show are just as, if not more, politically savvy than their counterparts who limit their news coverage to the network broadcasts.
While the reasons behind this data can be debated, Indiana University professor Julia Fox released the results of a study today, which found almost no difference in substantive news coverage between traditional broadcast network newscasts and The Daily Show. Fox, an assistant telecommunications professor at IU, and two graduate students analyzed coverage on The Daily Show and broadcast networks during the 2004 presidential conventions and the first presidential debates.
Not surprisingly, a second-by-second analysis of The Daily Show's audio and visual content found considerably more humor than substance -- Stewart himself has insisted that he is a comedian and not a journalist. A similar analysis of network coverage found considerably more hype than substance in broadcast newscasts. Examples of such hype included references to polls, political endorsements and photo opportunities.
"Interestingly, the average amounts of video and audio substance in the broadcast network news stories were not significantly different than the average amounts of visual and audio substance in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart stories about the presidential election," she wrote in the paper.
It's no secret that Stewart appeals to a younger demographic that indicates that they receive much of their traditional "news" from his nightly broadcasts. While conservatives like Bill O'Reilly and the Media Research Center (as Ignacio noted on an earlier blog) berate Stewart for being liberally biased and belittle his tactics, the results of this study indicate that perhaps their scorn is really driven by a legitimate fear that Stewart has the market on this demographic. (Not to mention the fact that Stewart continually mocks Fox News which makes it highly doubtful that his viewers would rely on the channel as a legitimate news source.)
Fox notes,
"Our findings should allay at least some of the concerns about the growing reliance on this non-traditional source of political information, as it is just as substantive as the source that Americans have relied upon for decades."
This also presents an interesting query about network broadcasts. How is it that they are no more effective than a 30-minute satire? This seems inherently problematic if the news organizations - whose primary goal is to report the news - are on the same level as a show which aims (at least on the surface) to entertain.
Vanessa Kitchen @ October 4, 2006 - 1:47pm
The study is also interesting because it relates to the changing face of news and the media. If people aren't reading newspapers as much and viewership of nightly news programs are dropping, The Daily Show's irreverant but still informational coverage of the daily news may be just what is needed to get the next generation to pay attention to the news. Although Katie Couric is a serious journalist, many people have tuned in to watch her show merely because of the entertainment value--to see how she does in her new job, or because they were loyal followers of her morning talk show. Traditional journalism is respected and revered, but it's worth it for us as up-and-coming journalists to take a look at non-traditional forms of journalism because that may be the future of news--entertainment and information-- in years to come.
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