Via The Atlantic: The Project for Excellence in Journalism examines The Daily Show, and surprise surprise, here are the some of the findings:
"The press itself is another significant focus on The Daily Show. In all, 8% of the time was made up of segments about the press and news media. That is more than double the amount of coverage of media in the mainstream press overall during the same period."
"Regular viewers of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report were most likely to score in the highest percentile on knowledge of current affairs."
Of course, the idea that Daily Show viewers are "stoned slackers" (as Bill O'reilly once referred to them) is refuted not only by my own observations (and self-observations), but also by the fact that political jokes require some prior knowledge of politics to enjoy, and judging by the average 1.8 million nightly viewers the show has (for comparison, CNN's highest rated show gets 1.2 million viewers), someone is enjoying it.
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3 comments:
Nice find,
Do you think the viewers are more informed because of the show, or because they are the sorts of viewers who would take an interest in news coverage and pursue other media outlets too?
Love the Bob Dylan blog title!
If you read the study it actually says that Daily Show viewers likely get their information from other sources as well. The study also notes a key failing in Daily Show coverage- they stay away from somber topics like the Virginia Tech shootings.
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