Page 319 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| News Sat re: Comedy Central and Beyond

some have expressed concern that Daily Show viewers will come to see all politics
as a joke, replacing caring with cynicism, action with laughing. Critics contend
that, rather than seek to change the system, the show and its resulting audience
subject the system to nothing more than a few jokes. Or, as Michael Kalin wrote
in the Boston Globe, “Stewart’s daily dose of political parody . . . leads to a ‘ho-
lier than art thou’ attitude toward our national leaders. People who possess the
wit, intelligence, and self-awareness of viewers of The Daily Show would never
choose to enter the political fray full of ‘buffoons and idiots’. Content to remain
perched atop their Olympian ivory towers, these bright leaders head straight for
the private sector” (Kalin 2006).

CrEaTing CriTiCaL nEws ConsumErs?
However, critics of The Daily Show have often overlooked the degree to which
many of its jokes require a fair knowledge of the news to understand and ap-
preciate what is being said in the first place. Behind Stewart’s tomfoolery is often
a sophisticated analysis or discussion of the news that assumes foreknowledge
of the players and issues involved. Indeed, charting empirically what before was
only casual intuition, in 2004, a National Annenberg Election Survey concluded
that late-night comedy viewers were more likely to know issue positions and
backgrounds of presidential candidates than were nonviewers, and that Daily
Show viewers were particularly well informed, possessing “higher campaign
knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers—even when
education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiv-
ing campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration”
(National Annenberg Election Survey 2004). The study asked six questions
about candidate’s platforms and policies to 19,013 adults, and whereas those
who had watched no late-night comedy programs in the previous week averaged
2.62 correct answers, and whereas Letterman and Leno viewers averaged 2.91
and 2.95 respectively, Daily Show viewers averaged 3.59. The Annenberg study
was careful not to suggest causation—it remained unclear whether The Daily
Show created or simply attracted better-informed viewers—but it adds empirical
weight to the notion that The Daily Show appears more likely to be cultivating
knowledge, and inspiring news discussion, rather than silencing it. Certainly, in
premier universities across America, one can often hear students and professors
alike discussing items from last night’s Daily Show, or wondering aloud how
Stewart will respond to today’s news.
News satire’s potentially positive effects on its audience include: (1) offer-
ing news-processing time, (2) making news accessible, and (3) teaching critical
media literacy. News often flies by us at a remarkable speed, usually dictated in
a firm, all-knowing manner. As such, it constantly risks passing us by as con-
fusing and decontextualized. By poking fun at the news, though, news satire
can encourage viewers to examine daily events more closely and to think about
them more deeply. Thus, news satire can allow us the time to think about issues
embedded in the news that a newscaster’s 30-second article overlooked.
Moreover, whereas the realm of news and politics have often proven alienat-
ing and distant to the common person, and youth in particular, comedy can