"The Daily Show," Seriously

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism just released a study on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," posing the question of just how journalistic is the satirical comedy show.

Their conclusion: Almost.

"In its choice of topics, its use of news footage to deconstruct the manipulations by public figures and its tendency toward pointed satire over playing just for laughs, The Daily Show performs a function that is close to journalistic in nature—getting people to think critically about the public square. In that sense, it is a variation of the tradition of Russell Baker, Art Hoppe, Art Buchwald, H.L. Mencken and other satirists who once graced the pages of American newspapers."

Stewart himself has poo-poohed the idea that he presents anything other than satire, even in the face of studies that show that younger viewers get a sunstantial amount of information from the program.

The findings (below) aren't all that surprising: The show focuses the most on politics, skewers the media often, and is tilted slightly to the left as Republicans "bear the brunt" of ridicule. On-air guests were balanced evenly, although Republicans tended to get harsher treatment. And the show tends to avoid tragedy, which makes sense if you are trying to make people laugh.

In the meantime, here's John McCain's appearance last night on the show, one that institgated a war of words today between his camp and the Obama operation over McCain's Hamas comments.

• The program’s clearest focus is politics, especially in Washington. U.S. foreign affairs, largely dominated by the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq, Washington politics and government accounted for nearly half (47%) of the time spent on the program. Overall, The Daily Show news agenda is quite close to those of cable news talk shows.
• 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.
• A good deal of the news, however, is also absent from The Daily Show. In 2007, for example, major events such as the tragic Minneapolis bridge collapse were never discussed. And the shootings at Virginia Tech, the most covered story within a given week in 2007 by the overall press, received only a cursory mention.
• Republicans in 2007 tended to bear the brunt of ridicule from Stewart and his crew. From July 1 through November 1, Stewart’s humor targeted Republicans more than three times as often as Democrats. The Bush Administration alone was the focus of almost a quarter (22%) of the segments in this time period.
• The lineup of on-air guests was more evenly balanced by political party. But our subjective sense from viewing the segments is that Republicans faced harsher criticism during the interviews with Stewart. Whether this is because the show is simply liberal or because the Republicans control the White House is harder to pin down.