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Saturday, January 26, 2008

"The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls."

The last two weeks of The Daily Show provided some interesting commentary on not just American politics, but the media.

Take, for example, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's "escalating war of words"--since January 19, 2007, the media has been proclaiming that the "gloves are off" in the race between the two Democratic candidates. We could read this as hype, hype, and more hype. As Jon Stewart put it, "You know, if they're going to keep doing that, why do these candidates keep taking their gloves on and off? It seems inefficient."

Or better yet, how about this? CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC constantly proclaim that race is an issue in the Democratic primary, and they've said that Hillary Clinton first played the race card. In actuality, Clinton said that it takes a president to actually make the policy that civil rights activists march for. Seems reasonable--civil rights activists hope to change public opinion and move policy-makers to act. They in themselves cannot change policy or create laws. Our media, however, turned her statement into an incitement of racial tensions. Contrasting Clinton's actual words to the commentary from the major news channels is both frightening and fascinating--her words are miles apart from the commentators' sensationalist accusations.

Then there's Mitt Romney's supposed eruption and Bill Clinton's angry lashing of reporters. Romney played semantic games--this lobbyist isn't running my campaign, he's just an advisor--but his reaction to the reporter's statements wasn't even on the scale of "angry outburst," much less "incensed" (Hardball). And Clinton? He seemed awfully calm for someone who was "throwing a fit" (Fox News). Yes, he did say, "Shame on you." But I couldn't even rightfully put an exclamation point on his statement against the media looking to create racial issues out of thin air. Yet according to CNN, "He lashed out."

All of this brings to mind Indiana University professor Julia A. Fox's study, "No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Broadcast Network Television Coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election Campaign." She found that The Daily Show contained as much substance as network news. "A [second-by-second analysis] 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."

The Daily Show is comedy. Very good comedy. But it's not supposed to be a news show. So it's a little sad when the actual news programs do such a poor job of providing substantive information that a comedy show stands with them on equal footing. Or as Stewart says, "You're hurting America."

Labels: Jon Stewart, politics, The Daily Show

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