Daily Show as Substantive as Network News

From the "I always thought as much" file, a study by Indiana University shows that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart contains as much news as a big 3 network news show:

Julia R. Fox, assistant professor of telecommunications at Indiana University isn't joking when she says the popular "fake news" program, which last week featured Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as a guest, is just as substantive as network coverage.

While much has been written in the media about The Daily Show's impact, Fox's study is the first scholarly effort to systematically examine how the comedy program compares to traditional television news as sources of political information.

Like I said, I don't find this too surprising, given TDS' fondness for using real news segments as foils for its satire.

And frankly, given the rank hypocrisy and corruption of so much of today's news and today's newsmakers, it seems to me that satire is a much more honest and accurate way to depict the news than the repetitive, "he said/she said" blather so frequently practised by straight journalism.

Perhaps there's hope for this country yet.