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It's funny. Laugh.

The Daily Show Wins Peabody 133

Posted by CmdrTaco from the most-important-slashdot-story...-ever dept.
wiredog writes "The Daily Show's Indecision 2000 was awarded a Peabody Award for it's coverage of the 2000 election! The Peabody is one of the most prestigious awards in broadcast journalism. Comedy central beat out ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, and all thew other news programs. " I watch this show pretty religiously: they are the only televised "news" I watch. Their Indecision 2000 coverage was awesome: through all the prodding, satire and joking, it was probably the best coverage during the entire election (and they made the purgatory that followed tolerable). In my eyes, they're the funniest thing coming out daily in any media. And Jon, if you ever need guests that nobody in your viewing audience has ever heard of, shoot me an email. CowboyNeal and I are more fun then a bag of cats, and you should see what he can do with a hard boiled egg and a straw.
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The Daily Show Wins Peabody More

The Daily Show Wins Peabody

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  • Re:Daily Show used to be better (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I agree 100% percent. The previous writing was top-notch. It meshed perfectly with Kilborne's style. It's also clear to anyone who saw Kilborne on TDS and now on his own show, that writing matters!

    Jon Stewart, while he can be funny, just doesn't do it for me on this show. Half of the problem is that he's a comedian that can't write for that kind of show. Or at least the show that it used to be for me.

    I find the correspondents much funnier, especially Steve Carrell(sp).

    Highlights from the Kilborne era:

    o Brian Unger doing a piece on how to be a journalist. He kept pestering innocent people with questions like "What do you have to hide?" and pissing them off. I remember a guy (a clown?) smashing the door in his face.

    o A joke about a cruise ship that was rejected from docking in the Caymen Islands because the passengers were gay. The punchline refering to the passengers being upset and admonished "Caymen, my ass!"

    o Beth Littleford's revisiting her past.

    Wow, I wish they would do a "best-of" from that era on DVD.

  • Bleah (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1. The Daily Show was much funnier with Craig Kilborn. It is currently unwatchable. Sorry. I tried. I really did. Jon Stewart has approximately zero charisma.
    2. I hate the interview segments; I hate it when they make fun of people who are being completely earnest and sincere. I hated them when Kilborn was host too; I can't pin this one on Stewart.
    3. The real problem with parody is that it sometimes becomes accepted truth. Dana Carvey's George Bush imitation, for example, is routinely praised as being spot-on--but if you actually listen to a speech by or an interview with Bush, and A/B it with the Carvey impression, the impression is a piece of crap. Same thing has happened to William Shatner; all the comedy routines about him are accepted reality, and people base their impressions of Shatner on them, rather than on his body of work.

    I think the award should have gone to a legitimate news source. Of course, the real problem is that there aren't any legitimate news sources any more. Corporations own them all.

    Also, I don't mean this to sound like I'm against satire or parody or anything like that. But people need to be aware that they have a responsibility to review non-parodized and non-satirized material as well. It's like basing your weltanschauung on Mad magazine if you're older than about 12.

  • the daily show isn't on on friday...

    --
    * CmdrTaco is an idiot.

  • He didn't do it as much when he was on TDS, but on his own late-night show I find it unbearable. Stewart kicks Kilborn's ass all over the place.

    - A.P.

    --
    * CmdrTaco is an idiot.

  • Doesn't this undermine respect for the news? (Score:5)

    by alewando ( 854 ) on Friday March 30, 2001 @02:49PM (#326012)
    Sure it's just comedy, so you're supposed to laugh, right? But isn't there another cause for concern, here?

    Respect for the news is an important part of the American way of life. It's written into the first amendment of our constitution, and it's taught in civics classes across the country: freedom of press reigns supreme. And it's for good reason, too. History has shown that not being a freedom-of-speech absolutist can only lead to the abyss of anarchy and even death.

    But how are we supposed to approve of a comedy news program? It not only satirizes the news its reports; it even satirizes the press as an institution. That flies in the face of our nation's histories and traditions, and it undermines respect for the constitution.

    If we are to remain free, then there must not only be freedom of press on paper. There must be freedom of press in our hearts and minds and souls. That means saying "no" to all attempts to encroach upon that freedom.

    The Daily Show must be censored. It's the only way we'll be able to preserve our freedom of speech.
  • 1932. ph34r m3!!
  • Ok... I just had to post this here since you brought up the venerable Ralph Nader. This is from a speech that ironically ended up on one of his spoken word "songs" that one of the beastie boys worked on called "How Long?" (which of course is where I heard it :^)...

    "Now, look at your late-evening news, if you can bear it. Look at it. It's 30 minutes. Nine minutes of ads; three minutes of street crime right at the beginning, never corporate crime, very superficially covered; one minute of impromptu chit-chat between the anchors; four minutes of weather; four minutes of sports and that's what happens in your town tonight. And we own the public airways. It's a disgrace. " -Ralph Nader
  • ...Daily Show is one of the few good things on television. Simpsons, 60 Minutes a close tie for second.

    I haven't watched as much TV since Ren & Stimpy went of the air. That was the high art of television. DVD someday??? I hope so.

  • My UID is 6917, eat me! :D

  • Actually, the closer to the truth a joke is the more funny it is. In short, I think you're full of it.

  • Paying for software is not the reason for the "Free Software" or "Open Source" movements. The whole issue is whether or not you get the source code to the instructions being run on your machine, and whether you can share the information with others.

    BTW, how do you know the Daily Show doesn't deserve a Peabody if you don't have cable?

  • I know I'll get serious modded down for this, :-) but despite The Daily Show winning the Peabody Award, why is it that Fox News Channel is beating CNN handily in the total national ratings according to Neilsens despite the fact FNC has 20% less cable system clearance than CNN? Or the fact that Rush Limbaugh's talk radio show is the #1 radio show in the USA, with 22 million listeners per week, way more than even Howard Stern's show?

    I think the reason is simple: people are getting tired of the liberal point of view. I've seen The Daily Show a number of times and the liberal bias is quite obvious.

    It's small wonder why The O'Reilly Factor on FNC is doing extremely well and also why Bill O'Reilly appropriately got that new contract there. :)

  • Since TV news coverage in the US is little better than entertainment programming, it's only fitting that an entertainment program should outdo the corporate news outlets.

    I thought much of Indecision 2000's humor fell flat, but one of their more successful satires was their 'documentary', "George W. Bush: From Wealth to Riches" (RealMedia) [comedycentral.com].

    --
    Lynne Cheney (video clip): The justice system in Texas serves all the people.
    Jon Stewart (adds): A tasty last meal.

  • The Daily show is truely awesome television.

    No it isn't. It has the potential to be, though.

    The first ten minutes are usually fairly good, and then it all goes rapidly downhill: they have a "celebrity interview" where all they do is promote some movie. It is never funny (not even a single laugh) and it's in every damned episode of the show. Very, very lame.


    ---
  • There's no need of a third party to undermine the respect in the news-feeds. They do an awesome job themselves.
    Most of the traditional news sources are biased, be it towards the interests of an owner (most often than not a corporation) or a political party. And they are covert about this, as if this were a secret.
    Comedy-type news outlets may be biased, but at least they don't make a secret out of it. People know the bias and adjust the news according to the explicit goal.

    The mechanisms traditional news outlets and comedy-type news broadcasts use to convey a meaning are very different. While the former convey facts and influence the public (or at least try to) by only showing part of the facts, comedy-type news rely on outrage: they show the news in a way that causes at the same time humor and anger at the facts being shown. Or, maybe better put, they use comedy to show outrageous things.
    In Italy there are three news programs that usually make a difference: and of those, two are satyric. "Striscia la notizia" is daily, and has the usual complement of nice girls and leit-motifs, and it's been one of the most popular TV shows in the last 10 years. Often their actions have had a significant political impact. "Le iene" is weekly, and for instance in the past weeks they did a campaign against a Vatican radio station which doesn't respect the italian regulations on EMF emissions (the Vatican is extra-territorial, and so is their radio station. BUT the antennas are close to houses, and it seems that there has been an awful lot of cancer cases in those places in the past years). Guess what? It did make a difference, and it almost caused a diplomatic accident.
    The third one is called "Reporter" and uses no comedy. But it shows hard facts, the kind that hurts.
  • CBS was Conservative Bavarian Seers, not Conspiracy of Bavarian Seers.

    :)


    "If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
  • April Fool's Day is April first. At the moment, it is approximately 00:12 GMT, March 31. This was posted on March 30. As such, it is not an April Fool's Day joke.

    --
  • Not JonKatzish enough -- Johnny Kat would NEVER be caught dead using MLA citations, or any citations at all for that matter.
  • Yeah, A. Whitney Brown [aol.com] is outrageously funny. I especially like this quip [aol.com] from his site.

    The net needs better transcripts of these shows. Of course there would be a lot of stuff to choose from, but I would enjoy digging thru volumes of text for some of my favorite writers.

    These days Comedy Central and Public Access are the only channels that have anything really going for them. Good writing, few restraints.

  • There is a phrase circulating through television studios and newsrooms across the country describing the philosophy of the modern television news director: "If it bleeds, it leads." Murders, sex crimes, animal abuse, freeway chases, and domestic squabbles are the main staples of television news programs today. The corporations owning most TV stations place excessive profit expectations on their subsidiaries, mandating that TV stations generate huge margins. The way most TV stations have managed to survive is by producing shows that appeal to the greatest number of viewers. However, in the process, the television industry has forgotten the responsibilities and requirements that allowed them to use publicly owned airwaves. This ignorance of the responsibility to inform is a threat to a democratic system relying on an informed citizenry.

    TV news has not always been shamelessly sensationalistic. When television was in its infancy during the late 1940s and the 1950s, the news was an inconsequential portion of the television day: just 15 minutes a day were devoted to a somber reading of the news by Douglas Edwards on CBS (Isaak 1). Back then there were only the 3 major networks; CBS, ABC, and CBS, known then and now as the "Big Three." They had practically no competition for viewers-with only three stations to choose from, the networks were guaranteed a large portion of the audience (Donaldson 3). The networks made all their money on the entertainment portion of their programming, and they made mountains of it. The networks could afford to have responsible, informative newscasts that lost money (Donaldson 3).

    This utopia of sorts, however, did not last forever. Starting in the late 1960s, with television viewership sharply on the rise, the local stations that run network programming, known as network affiliates, discovered the viability of local television news programming. What began as an experiment in San Francisco during a newspaper strike (Stark 3) quickly exploded across the nation as a way to supplement the compensation given station owners for running the network's programs. Creating or expanding existing news programming was very attractive to station owners because news is staggeringly cheaper to produce than a dramatic show (Stark 2). For those stations that already had news programs in one form or another, the expanding markets offered more opportunities for revenue. According to Jim Thistle, a professor at the Boston University School of Communications, and former news director at all three major network affiliates in Boston, "Once you have a newscast, the cheapest thing you can do is more news" (qtd. in Siegel, 3). Once stations started expanding, many saw newscasts generating one-half to one-third of the profit for the entire station (Stark 2).

    Competition drove the development of these newscasts because of the huge amounts of money involved. For example in Orlando, the 36th largest market, the top-rated station charges $1,400 for a 30-second advertising spot on its 11pm newscast. In contrast, the third most-watched news station charges only $900 for the same time slot. With eight minutes of commercials during the half-hour, the difference in one night is between $22,400 versus $14,400 in revenue. In a year, that makes for a $3 million difference between first and third place, just for that one program. In larger markets such as New York, the difference is $100 million per year (Winerip 34).

    These new newscasts did not arise from the tradition of radio and print journalism, as the network programs did. Many local TV programs were because of the potential for profits, and consequently were staffed with "TV people" instead of seasoned journalists (Stark 3). The result was a highly stylized version of journalism, focused more on the anchors reading the news than on the news itself. Some newscasts featured frequent banter between the newsreaders, and were likewise dubbed "happy talk" newscasts (Stark 3). Other stations used a different, "action news" format with fewer, faster-paced stories, exciting, upbeat music, and a heavy emphasis on visuals. These various formats were developed and marketed by a few, highly-paid media consultants to stations all across the country looking for a reliable way to make TV news attract viewers and bring in advertising dollars (Stark 4).

    If the new TV news was in a decline during the sixties and seventies, it entered a free-fall during the eighties. When Congress deregulated the telecommunications industry, they changed the rules governing TV station ownership: large corporations could now own three times as many stations as under the previous laws, and they were no longer required to keep a station for three years before selling it (Winerip 35). This significantly changed the climate in the television industry. The period following deregulation was marked by a rapid consolidation of many TV stations across the country by a few large corporations. In addition, larger corporations, enabled by the deregulation, acquired each of the Big 3 networks (Ver Berkmoes 3). Because the networks, in addition to providing programming, also own local stations ("O&O's:" Owned and Operated), their acquisition impacted a large number of individual stations across the country.

    Corporate ownership of TV stations and networks meant that changes were inevitable. Because TV stations typically have such huge profit margins (40-50%) (Winerip 39), they were attractive targets. Corporations with a variety of assets bought TV stations to take the pressure off more important holdings, like a flagship newspaper (Winerip 39). The result of this strategy was that TV stations bore the brunt of the profit-generating responsibilities (Ver Berkmoes 3). According to a vice-president at one such corporation, because these companies are publicly owned, corporations are accountable to their shareholders, and must pay attention to what Wall Street analysts expect of them, namely that television stations should be cash cows for their mother corporations (Winerip 39).

    Suddenly, the bottom line became much more important at TV stations. Station managers began frantically looking for ways to boost viewership. Since news programs were already the stations' main source of profit (Rapping 2), modifying the news to attract even more viewers seemed to make the most sense. News directors began to look for paradigms at other stations that had been successful in boosting ratings (Ver Berkmoes 3). One standout was WSVN in Miami. After losing their CBS affiliation in 1989, WSVN signed on with the fledgling Fox network and took a different approach to local programming. Station owner Edmund Ansin added four hours of news to the station's three (Lane 2). More notably, the station drastically restyled its approach to news. The new shows were fast-paced, had flashy graphics, breathless promos, and a large diet of crimes, fires, disasters, and mayhem. The change vaulted the station from a losing position to a consistent second place in the Miami market, regularly finishing above the area's ABC and NBC affiliates (Lane 1). Station managers looking for an idea to copy found a gold mine in WSVN (Ver Berkmoes 3).

    WSVN's influence is strongly felt in the picture of television news today. In a study by Rocky Mountain Media Watch in 1995 of 50 major news markets, crime and disaster news constituted 53% of news on local newscasts, on average. Other non-news items, including "soft news, anchor chatter, teases, and celebrity items" made up an average of 31% (Stark 2). These sensational stories are most often the ones with the best pictures-with satellite technology, on a slow day a station can pull in the latest mayhem from anywhere in the world. So if no one gets shot or escapes from prison in Boston, we can still see today's train wreck in Arizona or a gas explosion in Houston (Frank 2).

    The main purveyors of schlock are the same consultants, now hired by stations to help them stay competitive. Consultants' basic task is to alter the newscast to bring in as many viewers as possible. Their philosophy is evident in this consultant's report:

    "It is not surprising...that research indicates ratings rise when the broadcast is successful in exposing the viewer to what he wants to hear, in the very personal way he wants to hear it. In terms of news, this means ratings are improved not when listeners are told what they should know, but what they want to know." (qtd. in Stark 3)

    This new concept of "want to know" versus "need to know" is now the controlling principle of modern TV news. The popular term is "infotainment," describing pieces designed to arouse, scare, anger, and ultimately entertain hidden in the guise of "hard" news (Paige 2).

    The new approach has its defenders as well as its detractors. Joel Cheatwood, the news director at WSVN who pioneered the approach, defends his tactics by claiming, "I'm not talking about changing journalistic standards as much as...changing presentation" (qtd. in Siegel 4). However, one veteran reporter working under Cheatwood (who is now at WHDH in Boston) offers this contradictory anectode: "When I would get into arguments over basic journalistic accuracy, I would have five producers fighting with me" (Siegel 4).

    The consultants in charge of the changes often face bitter resentment from old-guard reporters who view responsible journalism as more important than boosted profit statements. Natalie Jacobson, a 25-year veteran of WCVB in Boston, calls consultants "the worst thing that ever happened to television" (qtd. in Aucoin 2). Jacobson decries consultants' cockiness, saying that they think they know better than experienced reporters do (Aucoin 3). She also lambasted consultants' hiring decisions, claiming that young reporters are hired for "showmanship" rather than reporting skills (qtd. in Aucoin 3).

    The dominance of infotainment affects not only those stations that seek out the approach, but also those stations that seek to preserve their traditions of responsible journalism. If one station in a market has moved to tabloid-style news, competitors' newscasts can seem old and tired by comparison. Many react by modernizing their own newscasts so as not to be trumped by a newer, flashier show (Siegel 4). Those that do not react quickly enough face plummeting ratings, which means plummeting revenue.

    The transformation of respectable television news into infotainment has drawn sharp criticism from all sides. Charles Kravetz, news director of New England Cable News and former assistant news director at WCVB, says of the new crop of newscasts: "[There used to be] a lack of a need to sensationalize and a reverence for journalistic standards that doesn't exist now" (qtd. in Siegel, 2). In reference to increased celebrity and scandal coverage, Jim Thistle says, "You almost can't tell where their tabloid shows like Hard Copy end and the news begins" (Siegel 4). Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz weighs in on the infotainment trend:

    "There's absolutely nothing wrong when they try to pitch journalism to a mass audience by making it entertaining. The danger comes when they try to pass off as real news a segment designed to titillate, anger, or scare people." (qtd. in Paige, 2)

    The danger is even more frightening because television, local news in particular, is for most Americans their main source of news. According to a 1996 study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 65 percent of adults are regular viewers of local TV news. The study also reported that local news is the most trusted source of news-trusted more than local daily papers, network news, and national daily papers (Winerip 32).

    That so many people trust a medium so thoroughly dubious is disturbing because of the inaccuracies plaguing television. In a most basic sense, the fast-paced formatting and the importance of striking visuals make it impossible to provide context or perspective on a story, two pillars of responsible journalism (Zuckerman, Limits, 2). This lack of context can distort a story. Marvin Kalb, president of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University, says that the disproportionate coverage of crime and scandal "skew[s] reality-" by covering only the politicians who are corrupt, showing wars when the world is largely at peace, and more crime in a society with the lowest crime rate in a quarter century (qtd. in McCartney, 6). One cable news reporter expresses her frustrations: "What I object to is the lack of context. It all goes hurtling by, and the world is a frightening and inexplicable place" (Stark 6). Ted Koppel thinks the rush to embrace new technological gimmicks for ratings affects the perception of journalism: "...live TV has confused a lot of people into thinking that seeing a live event is the equivalent of journalism" (Koppel 2).

    The pursuit of ad dollars has also influenced TV news in a far more subtle way. According to the Tyndall Report, a newsletter covering the network news programs published weekly, the amount of time allotted to editorial matter is slowly dwindling, replaced by more commercials (McCartney 2). The original format for the nightly network news was 21 minutes of editorial, and 8 minutes of advertising. Now only 19½ minutes of editorial are aired (McCartney 3). Less time means fewer or shorter segments, which means less context and less information (McCartney 3).

    The depraved state of television news constitutes a serious threat to the operation of the democratic system. The governmental process in a democracy relies on an informed citizenship-citizens need to know how their elected representatives are performing, what issues may be relevant to their own lives that might warrant political action, and where political candidates stand on issues in order to intelligently exercise their voting privilege (McCartney 4). Television news, by not providing context, by providing misleading and sensational coverage, and by not providing sufficient coverage of the political process, is clearly not doing its job of informing the public. Thistle sums it up: "[I don't think]...if you want to make a stab at being a well-informed citizen you would want a tabloid format as your main source of information" (Siegel 3).

    The extent of the problem is wide-ranging and far-reaching. According to a study by the Rocky Mountain Media Watch, subjects not covered sufficiently or at all were the environment, education, the economy, science, the arts, children, civil rights, parenting, and homelessness (Stark 6). These are the kinds of issues dealt with by politicians, but television does a shoddy job of providing enough coverage or information. For example, during the 1997 campaign finance hearings in Washington, D.C., the major networks provided no coverage at all, instead opting to produce in-depth reporting about the murder of Gianni Versace (Bozell 4). In a similar episode, during the 1998 gubernatorial race in California, none of the Los Angeles network affiliates showed up to cover the debates between the candidates. The leading stations similarly abandoned political coverage during the 1997 mayoral race in Los Angeles. When asked about their lapses in coverage, station and network spokespersons excuse was that there was insufficient public interest to justify such coverage; i.e. the stations would not be making any money (Cadell 1). National statistics confirm the trend: a University of Miami study discovered nationally twice as much crime news as political news, and 15 times as much crime as education news (Winerip 33).

    Viewers, on the other hand, seem not to care very much. Surveys have repeatedly shown that audiences prefer crime stories (Winerip 32). Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, sees this as part of the problem. "Local TV news wouldn't cover crime as much as it does if the public didn't reward such coverage with high ratings," says Altman (Public Health 1). News directors are bound to deliver whatever polls say viewers want. One Orlando news director says, "all the surveys put crime at the top of the list. Who am I to second-guess the audience" (qtd. in Winerip 32)? Critics differ as to why viewers like crime. A meteorology professor, commenting on over-hyped storm coverage, provided this observation: "People have a natural interest in damage and other people problems. It makes your own problems seem a little less" (qtd. in Stark, 5). Carlos Fuentes, a writer for World Press Review, sees the industry as the problem-because the public gets such a huge volume of low-quality news, they think they are well-informed (Fuentes 1). Writer Steven D. Stark has another theory. He says that the citizens who want to be well-informed are often wealthier, and therefore have access to other more reliable sources of news, such as cable TV and the Internet. The remaining bloc of viewers are less-educated, poorer people who probably think that tabloid journalism is perfectly acceptable (Stark 6).

    Despite the fact that viewers seem to be satisfied, television has a larger responsibility than pleasing viewers and corporate profit statements. Television is a remarkably influential medium, both to viewers and to the government to which television provides oversight. The decisions made by news directors in choosing which stories or issues to cover have a direct effect on the broader political agenda, both locally and nationally. As U.S. News and World Report media critic Mortimer B. Zuckerman, most succinctly put it, "No pictures, no policy" (Blind Eye 1). The television networks and local news are the "main source of perceptions about what is important" (McCartney 3). The effect can be best illustrated by the relationship between coverage and action on foreign policy. A few years ago there were famines in both Somalia and the Sudan, but CNN only had good pictures from Somalia. The public outrage fueled a policy effort to assist Somalia, while nothing was done for the Sudan (Zuckerman, Blind Eye, 1). Television influences the public's agenda, as well-studies show that viewers who watch crime-saturated newscasts are more likely to support more radical and punitive law-enforcement policies (Stark 6).

    The television industry's obligations go beyond austere democratic responsibilities to be informative. The television industry has violated the terms under which they are licensed to use the airwaves by the Federal Communications Commission: the 1934 mandate that established the FCC stated that the broadcast media are to serve the "public interest, convenience, and necessity" (McCartney 9). While there may be some wiggle room in the wording of the license requirements, and TV stations may be serving the public convenience, they are far from fulfilling their obligations to the public interest and necessity.

    Fortunately, the law provides a way out: if a station is not fulfilling its obligations, a petition can be heard to revoke the station's license. This has been done only once in recent memory-in 1972, a group of prominent business and education leaders sued for the FCC license of Boston station WHDH-TV because they were fed up with the "garbage" the station was producing. They renamed the station WCVB, which has remained a responsible news leader ever since (Siegel 2), despite the invasion of consultants (Aucoin 1). Ironically, Boston's ailing WNEV-TV was recently acquired by WSVN owner Edmund Ansin, and renamed WHDH. The tradition of schlock TV continues.

    Others see self-regulation as the way to save TV journalism. Austin, Texas ABC affiliate KVUE-TV has adopted a new strategy to battle sensationalism. The news director has put in place a set of stringent requirements that determine whether or not a crime story is aired, which include: Is action required? Is there a threat to public safety? Is there a threat to children? Does this have a larger community impact? These new rules are in response to viewer surveys that indicated that they were sick of crime (Holley 5). While this is represents being a slave to the viewers in a way, news director Mike George has the best of intentions: "It's just like any other story. We ask the question, 'Why is this important?'" (Holley 5)

    Works Cited

    Aucoin, Don. "The News from Natalie." Boston Globe 31 Mar. 1998: C1. Boston Globe Online. Online. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Bozell, L. Brent. "Tabloid Trash TV Preferred Over Hearings." Insight on the News 1 Sep. 1997: 29. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Caddell, Patrick. "A Modest Proposal: Sue the Bastards!" The Nation 8 Jun. 1998: 16. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Donaldson, Sam. "The State of Television News: In the Business to Make Money." Vital Speeches 1 Jan. 1998: 168. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Frank, Reuven. "Localizing Network News." The New Leader 6 Sep. 1993: 20. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    "Health Ranks Fifth on Local TV News." Public Health Reports July-August 1998: 296. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Holley, Joe. "Should the Coverage Fit the Crime?" Columbia Journalism Review May-June 1996: 27. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Isaak, Sharon. "Anchors Aweigh." Entertainment Weekly 18 Jun. 1993: 32. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Lane, Randall. "The Dean of Tabloid TV." Forbes 28 Feb. 1994: 100. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    McCartney, James. "News Lite." American Journalism Review June 1997: 18. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Paige, Sean. "That's Infotainment!" Insight on the News 8 Jun. 1998: 8. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Rapping, Elayne. "Watching the Eyewitless News." The Progressive Mar. 1995: 38. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Siegel, Ed. "Lack of Vision Hurt Channel 7 Under Mugar." Boston Globe 23 Apr. 1993: 45. Boston Globe Online. Online. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Siegel, Ed. "TV Wars." Boston Globe 12 Feb. 1995: 18. Boston Globe Online. Online. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Stark, Steven D. "Local News: The Biggest Scandal on TV." Washington Monthly June 1997: 38. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Ver Berkmoes, Ryan. "89 Hours." Chicago April 1995: 66. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Winerip, Michael. "Looking for an 11 O'clock Fix." The New York Times Magazine 11 Jan. 1998: 30+.

    Zuckerman, Mortimer B. "The Blind Eye of Television." U.S. News & World Report 18 Jan. 1993: 84. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.

    Zuckerman, Mortimer B. "The Limits of the TV Lens." U.S. News & World Report 25 Jul. 1994: 64. Online. Infotrac. 6 Jan. 1999.


  • It's pretty well established, by now, that news media has to have something to draw the audience in. News shows these days pick violence, charming newscasters, violence, often watched time slots, violence, crushing the competitors, violence, and violence.

    Lovely violence!
    Wonderful violence!
    Lovely violence!
    Wonderful violence!
    viiiiiiiiolence
    viiiiiiiiolence.

    etc...

  • I used to watch The Daily Show religeously when Craig Kilborn and the original correspondents were there. Jon Stewart's self deprecating style gets old fast and now I find the show almost intollerable.

    The newer correspondents and writers are hacks and the whole show feels contrived. I can't remember that correspondent's name from SNL who was originally on there, but, when he left, right before Craig did, the show died.
  • A. Whitney Brown

    Yeah, thats the guy. Whenever I watch the new correspondents it looks like they have an outline called "How to do a funny interview" by A. Whitney Brown which they follow word for word. I started to see patterns in what they did to try and get a laugh and it just stopped being funny.
  • cause the show had good writers

    Exactly, I wasn't so much a Craig Kilborn fan as I was a fan of the writing during that time period. Jon Stewart may be able to improvise, but, it has to be funny improvisation. I think J.S. can be funny, but, his self deprecating shtik gets old on a show like that. Craig was a talking head who could deliver the jokes with aplomb and not let whatever personality he has get in the way. J.S.'s delivery is infused with his personality and I just got bored with it. Plus the writing is not up to snuff.
  • Yes, I watched some of the election stuff and it was pretty good. I still wish they had gotten a non-comedian to be the anchor. And they need to get back their old writers if possible.
  • I hate the interview segments; I hate it when they make fun of people who are being completely earnest and sincere. I hated them when Kilborn was host too; I can't pin this one on Stewart.

    These can be very funny if done properly. One of the keys is to not necessarily be mean. Mean comedy is rarely funny. (There is a difference between offensive and mean). Also, in the past the political humor was funny on its own merit. I laugh easily at political comedy, even when I disagree with the stance that comedy is taking. Now unless you agree with the preconcieved notions of the writers, the comedy is not funny. Factually incorrect comedy is the worst. Kind of like "Sugar Free Chocolate, who's that for Ha Ha." Well, it is for diabetics jackass.

    The rest of what you say I agree with. I am not a good judge of charisma, but, I would definately take a C.K. over a J.S. for a show like that any day.
  • no way.

    Although it did take Stewart a little while to realize what kind of comedy he was doing, once he caught on it has been great. What was good about the Craig years was how they would absolutely skewer guests. His interview with Carrot Top was classic. Then people found out about it and were prepared. Anyway, their election coverage was great, as was one of the pieces they did on the Rich pardon hullaballo. "What!? You mean favors for donations is common in Washington?" Anyway, I think it is better now, their writers blow away the normal networks.
    --
  • The real reason The Daily Show is so great is not just because they make fun of the news. Yes, their satire is up there with the rest of 'em.

    The great thing about TDS is that they make fun of the media organizations that cover the news as well !!

  • There was one of the funniest video clips I ever saw that The Daily Show did I believe it was December 12 (whenever the Gore concession speech was ) where Steven Colbert explained that Gore's next move was to appeal the supreme court ruling to the Hall Of Justice and the Superfriends. Someone needs to get a video clip of this on the web ^^

  • Peabodies are not just journalism awards (Score:5)

    by cowboy junkie ( 35926 ) on Friday March 30, 2001 @03:06PM (#326037) Homepage
    Saying that the Daily Show beat out network coverage is inaccurate, as it's not as if they won an award in a 'journalism' category. It would be just as accurate to say that Malcolm in the Middle or the West Wing beat them out.

    From the Peabody website:
    "The George Foster Peabody Awards, established in 1939 and first awarded in 1940, recognize distinguished achievement and meritorious service by radio and television networks, stations, producing organizations, cable television organizations and individuals."

    The Peabody Awards have a history of rewarding programs off the beaten path - I remember MST3K winning a few years back. It's nice to see, since the Daily Show is one of the smartest, most consistently funny shows on television.
  • On that note one of Canada's own news-spoofs asked George W. Bush what he thought of Prime Minister Poutine (The name of a popular meal here involving grease, french fries, grease, cheese, and grease), and George proved he didn't even know the name of Canada's prime minister!
    This isn't quite what happened; I saw the actual footage a while back (the show was This Hour Has 22 Minutes [22minutes.com], in a segment that Rick Mercer does called Talking to Americans). Basically, George W. was about to make a speech or something, and Rick Mercer of This Hour got next to the little runway thing that W. and his staff were walking down. They accosted various staffers as they passed by, telling them that Prime Minister Poutine of Canada had previously said he was not going to take sides in the US election, but that he had since stated that he thought W. was the man to lead the US in the new millennium. The staffers all just pretty much smiled and said "that's great", or something similar. Then W. himself came along, and Mercer told him the same thing. W. stopped for a moment and gave a nice little speech about how Mr. Poutine obviously understood that trade was important.

    It was rather funny, hearing him refer to the PM of Canada as Mr. Poutine. Of course, this man is now the leader of the most powerful military in the world. I'm scared..
  • I just looked at the This Hour Has 22 Minutes [22minutes.com] web site, and apparently on April 1st at 9pm the CBC is airing an entire one-hour Talking To Americans special -- this will include the footage of George W. Bush showing that he doesn't have a clue who the Prime Minister of Canada is. So, if any slashdotters in Canada haven't seen that yet, here's your chance. ;)
  • I strongly suspect that 'That's My Bush" will utterly destroy the cretin in the Whitehouse.

    That's not really what Parker and Stone have in mind. I can't find the article I read that said it best, but this one [post-gazette.com] does a good job of explaining it too. They say they don't want to do the cliched Saturday Night Live thing of just making the guy look like an idiot, because that gets old after 5 minutes. Their goal seems to be to bash sitcoms, because sitcoms are the lowest form of entertainment known to man. (In my opinion and theirs.) So it should hopefully be as original as South Park.
    ----
    "Here to discuss how the AOL merger will affect consumers is the CEO of AOL."
  • Just checked my JamTV listings. The Daily Show is not available in Canada on cable. :(

    I'll just have to be happy with This hour has 22 minutes [22minutes.com]. Also, this weekend is Rick Mercer's one hour special Talking to Americans [22minutes.com] Sunday at 9, keeping alive the grand Canadian tradition of mocking their neighbours to the south.

    I've heard comparisons between This Hour and The Daily show. Anyone who's seen both have any comments about either?
  • Yeah, well now it;'s the Conspiricy of Britney [britneyspears.ac] Spears [mit.edu]
    sorry, couldn't resist the lame gag...



  • they did bring in Bob Dole a lot during the coverage (I noticed him there more during the National Conventions). Actually that guy has a great sense of humor and a great personality. He was a good fit for the show, given the events that they were covering.
    --------
    "Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal--if you don't use your thumbs."
  • Have cheer; the Daily Show is available. The Comedy Network [comedynetwork.ca] plays it one day behind on weeknights at 11:00pm, and then again Tue-Fri at 3:00am.
  • When I followed the links given by CmdrTaco and the press release was on the site itself.. I almost laughed and thought never trust a press release on a satire site.. so I went looking on the net to see if it was true or not.. sure enough I found this [uga.edu] on official peabody site. Way to go daily show :)

    Ian
  • Everybody know that the only news worth watching is The Naked News [nakednews.com]...Caution, this is a real broadcast!

    -Ben
  • Now that was one interview to remember!!! Posh Spice (I dont know the right spelling...) was one Brit B.
    Jon Stewart... you rock
  • "and you should see what he can do with a hard boiled egg and a straw"

    SHAMELESS!!!
  • Heh heh. You said "weltanschauung". "...they have a responsibility to..." do nothing. People do not have a "responsibility" to watch, read, or think anyting they don't want to. If you don't want to see the world through Mad magazine, then don't.
  • This sends a great message to all of the major news agencies in the USA: your news is CRAP.

    CNN, CBS, ABC, FOX, and just about everyone besides the Christian Science monitor produce some of the most hideously slanted crap out there. Almost every piece of news sent out by a major news source is reactionary tripe, leaving objectivism behind in favor of a ratings boost. These people live in constant fear of offending advertisers or the corporations that own them.

    Not so for Comedy Central. While they probably could get in some very deep ship for angering their parent, Viacom, they do not give a damn. Everyone is open to jokes, be they charged with ethnic, political, or scatalogical humor. This leads to a total, unabashed, unbiased news source.

    I certainly hope that this shames the big news sources into change.
  • Uhm... April Fool's, right?

    -carl
  • New episodes only Monday-Thursday..
  • I agree with you. First few weeks after the change of anchorship were kind of wierd but after that Stewart's been top notch most of the time. I guess a little known fact is that he actually used to write for SNL. His stand-up comics aside DS are also hilarious although everything he does tends to concentrate on him making fun of himself or his religion(jews). Oh well, 15min/day of him makes my day..
  • If people keep putting April Fools Day stuff up 2 days early now this year ... when will it start moving up all the way to say March 1, etc etc etc. APR 1 ONLY
  • Don't be ridiculous -- Kilborn probably doesn't have the caustic wit that Stewart has, but Kilborn never read scripts at the guest. In my estimation, he's a much better interviewer than Stewart. Stewart has a tendency to cut off his guests to make only slightly amusing jokes about himself. Some of the best interviews I have ever seen, period, have been on The Late Late Show and earlier with The Daily Show. BTW, it's hardly fair to judge a show by the first week of it (the mistake was much easier to make in this case because the show's launch was incredibly smooth). Both shows are very good and aren't in competition for viewers. The Late Late Show is a much more quirky, original show than The Daily Show, which is basically just Weekend Update expanded to a full 30 minutes. Kilborn's show tries to be a different late night talk show: it has far more personality than Conan, Leno, or Letterman, which all use the same format -- Leno's saving grace is Headlines; Letterman is a fantastic host and funny; Conan is occassionally funny, but the jokes are usually too obvious and low to be memorable. So... at least Kilborn's doing something different.
  • Kilborn is pretty good at interviews when the guest is willing to play back. This is worth mentioning not because of your second point, but because of Shatner. Everyone would get a much better impression of Shatner if they saw the Kilborn interviews on The Late Late Show. Really good stuff.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • ...if you think that more than .5% of the people watching The Daily Show would consider you celebrity enough to be a guest.

    --

  • No no no, the best of 'em all is Bill Maher.

    He invites republican guests to his Politically Incorrect show only to poke fun at them, and regularly insults "environmental" president Bush.
  • er, mr writer,

    Indecision 2000 was able to (in a humerous way)...

    So, "humerous" means some kind of Homer humor?
  • The Onion [theonion.com].

    Especially their "Serbia Deploys Peacekeeping Forces to US [theonion.com]" coverage.

    A sample excerpt from the above news report:
    BELGRADE--Serbian president Vojislav Kostunica deployed more than 30,000 peacekeeping troops to the U.S. Monday, pledging full support to the troubled North American nation as it struggles to establish democracy.

    "We must do all we can to support free elections in America and allow democracy to gain a foothold there," Kostunica said. "The U.S. is a major player in the Western Hemisphere and its continued stability is vital to Serbian interests in that region."

    Kostunica urged Al Gore, the U.S. opposition-party leader who is refusing to recognize the nation's Nov. 7 election results, to "let the democratic process take its course."...

    Can also refer to the red "Mayhem 2000" sidebar on the article for the rest of their election coverage.

    ---
    "And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."

  • No April Fools (Score:5)

    by mr_gerbik ( 122036 ) on Friday March 30, 2001 @02:44PM (#326064)
    No April Fools.. that was my guess at first as well. You can find the press release [uga.edu] at the Peabody Awards website [uga.edu].

    -gerbik

  • Eh (Score:1)

    by aengblom ( 123492 )
    Well since I live in a Comedy Central black out zone [mapquest.com], I don't get to watch the show much, but Daily show one for two reasons. First, everyone else blew the election coverage and second, no one else actually forcasted the outcome. We ALL know when NBC changed from Decision to Indecision 2000, they had something there. Pretty impressive comedy or not ;-).

  • Hey, nice twist at the end there. You had me going.

    Seriously. It's pretty well established, by now, that news media has to have something to draw the audience in. News shows these days pick violence, charming newscasters, violence, often watched time slots, violence, crushing the competitors, violence, and violence.

    The stories, themselves, have to have draw. Violence, human interest, drugs, relevancy (well, no, this isn't enough alone, really), violence, crime, violence, violence, or violence.

    Or you could throw all of that away and use humor as a draw. Think about that. Anything can be turned into humor by a skilled enough writer. You can cover any issue, if you can make it funny, anything. You can report on anything. You're not restricted to the flash-in-the-pan "I-shot-my-whole-family" kind of trash that is the only thing that gets ratings these days. People don't change the channel while they are laughing, so if you're clever, you might actually slip something informative and educational in there. You've got to get the attention of the viewer, in these days where the average american has access to 52.3 channels. Humor just may be the most flexible way to do it.

  • Mister, are you sayin that cowpies and tumbleweeds ain't got a right to representation?

    We count 'em extra (almost double) in the electrical collage because they are more important than the cityfolk on the coasts. The Founding Fathers considered this the most sacred right: the right to more than equal representation and to receive more federal dollars than you send to Washington in taxation.

    The map don't lie.

  • I am very happy for the Daily Show - I don't watch much TV but when I go through phases of watching, the Daily Show is a fixture that other programming slots revolve around.

    Still, let's not confuse the Daily Show with information. They don't have the format for that. The best they have done, (mind: I do consider the sight of Beth Littleford masturbating a stud-boar through a hole in the wall very informative in it's way) is to scoff and make obscene gestures at the corporate approved reporting of the networks. While that is a crucial humanitarian service it is not a substitute for "news".

    Who here misses Beth Littleford, i mean aside from the masturbating pig thing? She was the greatest smart-ass of them all. I cried the day she left for CBS or whatever sordid hole in the wall she's at now.

    I think the problem is that you can make a profit turning news into propaganda for your parent company's world-view, and you can attract a devoted audience of people who want to see that kind of journalistic prostitution pilloried and ripped to shreds, the way the Daily Show has, but you can't seem to make a big profit actually telling people what's going on in the world.

  • You're all the same brainlesss scum to me.
    PS: I can tell you're a lib-RA-tarian from the foaming mouthed vitriol in your posts, so you don't need to declare it. I'm guessing most other people find libertarian&lt-&gt sociopath connection fairly obvious by now, as well.
  • Here's the press release... check out the first paragraph

    "Athens, GA - Razor-sharp coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign from an unlikely source, a freshman comedy focusing on a loving but quirky American family, and an invaluable public service effort on colon cancer are among the 34 winners of the 60th annual Peabody Awards. Comedy Central?s "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Indecision 2000" joined FOX?s "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Confronting Colon Cancer" reported by "NBC Today" co-anchor Katie Couric - along with repeat winners "The West Wing" and "The Sopranos" - on the list of this year?s Peabody recipients. "

    press release [uga.edu]

  • I must respectfully disagree. I think Jon is much funnier than Craig. Craig did make a mistake tho by leaving the show. Does anyone watch his show after Letterman? I'd rather watch Conan if I was up that late.

    I do miss the old correspondents. A. Whitney Brown and Brian Ungar were hilarious.
  • OH MAN! I remember that interview, that look she gave him was enough to send shivers down my spine. It still gives me shivers when I think about it... ick.
  • I'm fairly sure that Comedy Central used the "Indecision" moniker back in '96 when Politically Incorrect still had the 7pm/11pm time slot.
  • wow, they actually won. For a full list of winners, hit this link [uga.edu]
    good job Daily Show
  • You forgot the current updates on what celebrity is getting divorced and carrying whose child.

    "There's a crisis in the mideast! But who cares about those silly zealots getting their panties in a bunch? There's _real_ news to report!"
    --
  • Yes but it says the Daily Show won for its coverage of a certain event, in this case the election, whereas ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN did not

    aztek: the ultimate man

  • It only proves three things:
    The quality of SlashDot continues to plummet.
    The news media's journalism is almost as bad as SlashDot's, that they'd stoop this low for a Peabody. I guess Peabody == Pander.
    SlashDot authors are hypocritical. "I'll pay for cable, when I'm entertained, but rant about paying for software, services, etc."

    And I'm not an M$ fan, promoter, etc. I'm just not hypocritical, like SlashDot is. I don't pay for cable, myself.

  • First, I understand the free vs. free thing. Yes, yes, there are two types of "free". SlashDot often raves about the free I'm talking about (price) as well as the other kind (freedom). Cable T.V. is/has/does neither.

    I used to rent cable T.V. just like everyone else, but it's expensive, the quality of programming is horrible, and programs like the Daily Show are stupid, IMHO. I sorta miss Sci-Fi, TLC, and the Discovery Channel, but all three have seen better days. Paying $40/month for the cable "just above basic" for channels with interference, is not what I call a deal. I saw a few episodes of the Daily Show and quit watching it. Yes, it's a whole lot better than SNL's "News" segment, but they both are stupid, IMHO. Thus, I dropped cable just a few months ago, before the election. (No, I cannot comment on their election coverage, but who cares)?

    My points were that this wasn't SlashDot newsworthy and that the Peabody shouldn't have been awarded. The Daily Show is a comedy about real news; it is not true journalism, although most of the other choices were bad, too. Maybe the judges of the award thought they sucked less, I don't know, but the Daily Show shouldn't have gotten it.

    There was SO much coverage of the election by SO many people that there was such a large pool of talent on just this one event that they should have had no trouble finding a more worthy choice. Also, there were plenty of other news stories in 2000, not the least of which was Y2K, itself. The election was a HUGE one, but to have the Daily Show get it is bad.

    Perhaps this has all been an April Fool's Day gag. I don't care, since I haven't talked to anybody about this story, outside these two responses. But if it is true, perhaps the news media is even worse than I've even imagined.

    Again, this isn't SlashDot worthy.

    SlashDot really sucks, lately. The last 6 months to a year bite! I hope there is a better "News for Nerds" web site out there. I start looking today, on April Fool's Day. BTW, LinuxToday.Com offers real Linux news. A bunch of Science Sites, including BBC's are far better. Space.Com is great, too. Even Yahoo's Science section is better than SlashDot at "News for Nerds." This site is beginning to suck so badly! This site is becoming "Politics for nerds who believe the way we dictate at SlashDot."

    The stories are mostly repeats, there is little checking of facts, people all over the place are getting mad, politics is rampant, or the stories are stupid, like this one.

  • CowboyNeal and I are more fun then a bag of cats

    Riiiiighhhttt.... what are you going to do CmdrTaco, complain about Windows for all your seven-and-a-half minutes? How hard it is to be a Linux media whore? What a great project Everything2 was?

    I think I'd rather see CowboyNeal in all his monotone glory.

  • No.

    Jon Stewart is a much better host simply because he can improvise. He actually interviews guests instead of reading a script at them. Craig Kilborn was a funny host cause the show had good writers. This is painfully obvious if you see his new show. The writers suck. I watched it the first week it was on the air, and after seeing the same show five nights in a row, I decided I'd had enough.

    -Dorsey

  • I won't dispute that because I am not watching the daily show ( I think I saw it once ). My point is general. The only interviewer who pushed Bush beyond his comfort zone before the elections was Letterman. Not all jesters are telling the truth, some are crap, maybe most. But many jesters do and almost no 'serious' network journalist does. I think that is bad enough.
  • Now, my dear hard scientist, surely you don't think slashdot is the place to write a PhD? If anything, the formatting options are too restrictive, and the peer review leaves something to be desired. So please consider my post to be written in jest ;-).

    Yes I am aware of King Lear being literature. I am also aware that all around the world and all throughout history, literature and theatre have been a (sometimes ) safe haven for people who wanted to express in roundabout ways criticism that could not be said in a straight face without dire consequences for themselves.

    Considering the US: No, the President cannot kill journalists. He doesn't have to. As I said earlier. Power has adapted to the new rules. You can say what you want. But what you say has no political imact. You cannot see serious journalists asking tough questions and speaking in an unrestrained manner on TV or in major newsparers. The BBC described "Indecision 2000" as a stolen election. The American media barely reported that Bush's inauguration drew more protesters to Washington than have been there since the Vientam era. The only people on TV who dare mention Bush's legitimacy issue are comedians. The only people on TV who point out that Bush's ( and Clinton's ) drug policies are a supreme case of hypocrisy are comedians. The US has very tough laws that allow journalists to say extremely offensive things without liability, on the assumption that the role of the media is to protect democracy. This assumption is no longer true in the US. The role of the US media today is to increase shareholders value and that is way Jay Leno has become a source of news whereas the evening news have become a mild entretainment whose obsequesness and constant groveling is second only to Pravda's.

    The journalists who worked at Pravda cooperated because they didn't want to spend the rest of their life in Siberia. Those who work at Fox cooperate because they want to retire comfortably. The result is the almost the same, and the first ammendment cannot be of help here.

    PS.

    If you think that Shakespeare made theatre for idiots, you really need a visit to your local academia to refresh your memory.

  • The thing that keeps (some) journalists from asking different questions or reporting different view-points is not obeisance to corporate over-lords but the herd mentality

    Not according to my sources. Plus, herd mentality means follow the leader. People behave like a herd because they know that being different is punished. Who does the punishing? Who creates the work environment that rewards herdlike behavior and punishes serious journalism? Who pays six-figures salaries to the members of your happy milquetoast, instead of wipping their ass with their shabby product?

    the number of protesters refers to protesters during presidential inauguration, sorry for not being clear.

    The press cannot ignore all corporate wrongdoing because sensationalism sells. And their own competition insures that once something is out, they have to milk it to the end and beyond. Yet even under these constraints the press manages to ignore a lot of things, The long actors strike for-example, the war over copyright extension, etc. The corporate world is competitive and the fact that there are some common corporate interests does not mean that corporations never hurt one another. But as you point out, the acceptable way to report things that heavily damage corporate interests is under the guise of hysteria. Serious journalism would have required that someone went and investigated these things before they are made known by a lawsuit. Serious reporting would feature corporate news at the top of every news item ( without histeria), and would analyze every merger and every major corporate decision because these decisions affect our life. Serious reporting would invesigate the 'crisis' in California on primetime instead of merely reporting what politicians have to say about it.

    Bottom line: Media executives are beholden to the bottomline, and if they were not their shareholders would be suing them. Democracy is something else.

  • Re:They deserve it. (Score:4)

    by metis ( 181789 ) on Friday March 30, 2001 @03:20PM (#326085) Homepage
    Come to think of it. It used to be the case, in the old days of tough and tempestuous monarchs, that nobody in his right mind would dare criticize the powerfuls. The only ones who could speak freely were 'fools', or 'court jesters'. (That is why, for example, the fool in 'King Lear' is the only one telling the truth to Lear ).

    Then some people invented Democracy and free speech and even fought and got killed to put those ideas into law so that people could say whatever they wanted without having to pretend they are jesters.

    It took some time but eventually the powerfull figured out a way around and we are all back to square one, where only jesters tell the truth on the screens of the corporate media.

  • That's actually pretty good. And I thought all the ASCII artist have perished. Too bad you can't do ANSI in a browser.
  • Well it cetainly is something to think about, regardless of whether this story is true or not. It's well known that the US government has had a stranglehold on the media since Nixon, and there are some wonderful Canadian documentaries about the gulf war and the media circus that surrounded America's decision to get involved. On that note one of Canada's own news-spoofs asked George W. Bush what he thought of Prime Minister Poutine (The name of a popular meal here involving grease, french fries, grease, cheese, and grease), and George proved he didn't even know the name of Canada's prime minister!

    I think that satire offers an outlet for all the truth that the media can't handle. And whether you think you media is protected by this and that amendment, well think again. It's about a buck guys and gals, and not about the truth. Face it, news had become as sensational as ever and satire provides the proper guise of falsity so that serious issues (and not so serious issues in their own right) can be discussed without having to worry about the next payment from advertisers.

    I stopped watching the television news. It's all cut up wrong anyway. There are my seven dollars (that's two cents american).


    yoink
  • ... leaving objectivism behind in favor of a ratings boost.

    That should be objectivity.

    It Ayn't the same thing.

    TSG

    Unless you want to discuss libertarian media bias...

  • Jon Stewart is speaking truth to power? Let's be serious. The Daily Show is a second-rate, 30 minute "Tonight Show." Stewart stole schtick from Craig Kilborne, who stole it from Not Necessarily the News, who stole it from Dennis Miller, who stole it from some nondescript comedian whom I am too young to know.

    On the Daily Show, the prevailing ideology is cynicism, mixed with blow-job jokes about Bill Clinton, dumb jokes about George Bush, and pee-pee jokes by Jon Stewart about Jon Stewart. It is not revealing anything earth-shattering or even mildly critical about co-called corporate overlords. In fact, it is dead-smack in the middle of the conventional mainstream, right next to Rather and Brokaw, only a little less serious about itself. There's a reason that Stewart is being asked to host award shows on networks and that his monologues appear on the Today Show some mornings; it is not because he is a rebel prophet.

    Stewart is a jester, but he's not telling the truth. He's repeating the same garbage that you can get on the networks, but he's doing it with a smirk. That's not insight.

  • It is almost as if you are molding stereotypes to fit your argument.

    The thing that keeps (some) journalists from asking different questions or reporting different view-points is not obeisance to corporate over-lords. It's a herd mentality. Have you ever been to the National Press Building in Washington? It's like Melrose Place, but with Washington reporters for major newspapers competing for each other's affection and admiration instead of more attractive people. Those who deviate from the prevailing journalistic norms or political ideology or social beliefs are ostrascized. They are not invited to Happy Hour at Chi-Chi's on Friday. The result is a milquetoast, left-center media that cares about and reports on what other members of the milquetoast, left-center media care about. At least as far as the national, mainstream (read: print and broadcast) media is concerned.

    Your theory that the media only protects profits just doesn't jibe with what is printed or broadcast. Why no coverups of Firestone, which was a bit of hysteria when one considers the actual number of accidents involved? Why would the people you consider to be corporate slaves blow up GM trucks on Dateline NBC to make the cars look unsafe?

    You're wrong on other facts, as well.

    Bill Buckley, Richard Brookhiser, and other conservative talking heads are calling for drug legalization. As are Democrat politicans such as Curtis Schmoke, Paul Wellstone, and others. You are just dead wrong when you say that comedians are the only ones criticizing what you see as a hypocritical drug policy.

    The Inauguration did not occasion the largest protests in Washington since the "Vietnam era." Every year, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, abortion rights and anti-abortion protestors dwarf the cadre of protestors that turned out for Bush in January. The protests accompanying the Supreme Court's oral arguments in Casey v. Planned Parenthood were the largest protests in the last ten years, with more than ten times the size of that accompanying the inauguration. That's not even addressing the IMF/World Bank protests a few months prior.

    Finally, as a person who has close ties with my local academia, I can write with confidence that the academy is not the place to visit to assure oneself that certain endeavors are not undertaken by idiots. The place is chock full of 'em, you know.

  • I remember John Stewart when he was a bartender at a place called City Gardens in Trenton, N.J.

    He was a kind of guy that was the "perfect bartender" because he always was cracking people up. He knew instinctively what was funny, and his timing was great.

    I remember a few years later I bumped into him at another bar called Mundy's after his shift. I was coming back from a recording session (I had a producer paying for a 24-track 10 song demo...and felt pretty big about it) and he asks me "what do you do"? I tell him "I'm in the music biz, I'm working on a demo". So he goes "really, I'm in the entertainment biz...I just signed a contract at MTV". So I asked him if he was going to be a V.J., he told they were giving him a show! Well I told him he'd buy the next round, and for six months I fumed because it took that long for even the Jon Stewart commercials to appear on MTV...I thought he was pulling my leg..stealing my little bit of glory.

    But from day one, that man has been consistently funny. Good work Jon!

  • The best interview I saw during last year of a politician was when Ralph Nader was on the Daily Show. Jon asked some very point-blank and informed questions which got past the "why don't you drop out you idiot" questions that Nader got on all the other interviews he did and got to the core of the green party platform. The Daily Show's coverage of the election was more than just satire, it was a truely honest way of viewing the political process from the eyes of a normal person.


    ====
    If all comedy comes out of tragedy, let the killing begin...

  • No April Fools.. that was my guess at first as well.

    Yeah, well it wasn't my first guess, seeing as how it's March 30th.
  • Please fucking learn the difference between "it's" & "its" you fuckwit. And to Taco: either edit the bloody thing, or at least let us know that you know the difference: sic.
  • On #3: you've missed the point of doing impressions. You want to convince people that you're even more real than the real person. Carvey does just that. Did Bush ever say "Wouldn't be prudent?" Nope. But I'm sure he's convinced millions of people that that's a Bush line. He's more Bush than Bush ever was. Now that's an impression.
  • Mr. Peabody from Rocky and Bullwinkle.

    That's Peabody and Sherman. It's rated "J" for the whole family.

    --

  • Probably the first and last time a major news network has copied off of The Daily Show's ideas. Well, ever since the Peabody award, probably not the last.
  • I've soured away from The Daily Show ever since Craig Kilborn left (he was just so much more professional than Jon Stewart), but I never expected the show to win anything other than laughter from the audience and disdain from the other news shows (I think they actually had Sam Donaldson and Wolf Blitzer on two different shows).

    Still, it's ironic that the winner of this award isn't a legitimate news show; it's a parody of all the other shows, with the most absurd parts exaggerated (one of my personal favorites being the spoof of the Dateline Timeline). I can just see Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and Dan Rather all down on their knees, shouting, "WHYYYYYYY?!?!"

  • You gotta admit, they hit the nail right on the head when they kept saying "Indecision 2000". In a time when every other news network was acting like the Earth was going to explode just because the U.S. was in electoral limbo, The Daily Show revealed the funny side of it all. Even my pet bird laughed at Jon Stewart's antics while I was watching the show in the second week of December.

    Perhaps the title "Indecision 2000" was one of the reasons why they won the Peabody award. At least they didn't indirectly sway the election itself by making a hasty prediction, like the other anchors did.

  • They're the only "news" (quotes because they don't consider themselves journalists) source that blatantly points out lies.

    I'm going to have to watch them tonight to see Jon's reaction.
  • Respect for the news is an important part of the American way of life. It's written into the first amendment of our constitution, and it's taught in civics classes across the country: freedom of press reigns supreme.

    Unfortunately if you watch some of the regular news channels this type of thinking is very much ingrained. One of the most frequent bleats heard about the Internet is that the people cannot be trusted to deal with 'unmediated' information from politicians.

    The US is now very much in the situation the UK was in the late 1960s before the Monte Python crew ripped the establishment stiffs apart. The US had a chance to produce first rate comedy - like SOAP. And the Moral Majority and Bigot Brigade crushed it threatening an advertiser boycott.

    These days the Southern Baptist church threatens a boycott and the Disney corporation flips them the bird. Things have definitely improved.

    Over in the UK we watched the Spitting Image series 'The President's Brain is Missing'. As a result GOP claims that Reagan was widely respected abroad tend to leave me incredulous. I strongly suspect that 'That's My Bush" will utterly destroy the cretin in the Whitehouse. People will laugh at the jokes for the first few months. After a year they will laugh at the President.

    That is a good thing.

  • They say they don't want to do the cliched Saturday Night Live thing of just making the guy look like an idiot, because that gets old after 5 minutes.

    They will face a monumental task making him look intelligent.

  • Re:Ha! April Fool's! link (Score:3)

    by onepoint ( 301486 ) on Friday March 30, 2001 @05:05PM (#326119) Homepage Journal
    This is the link. http://www.peabody.uga.edu/news/pressreleases/pres srelease.asp?ID=57

    I think someone hacked the list.

    Reasons :

    The last 3 shows are presented incorrectly. You will see that the winners and the description of the winners do not have a space after them.

    The last 3 shows do not seem to be the types of shows that should be winning ( again this is my view ).

    Onepoint


    spambait e-mail
    my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
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  • I may be a writer, but nobody accused me of being a good speller ;).

    Damn spellcheckers.

  • Humour as Truth (Score:3)

    by Mossfoot ( 310128 ) on Friday March 30, 2001 @02:45PM (#326123) Homepage
    In an age where tabliod journalism seems to reign supreme, where shock-value is standard criteria, and where the line "if it bleeds, it leads" rings true to many, it's refreshing to see that Satire is finding some respect.

    Humour is perhaps one of the least appreciated forms of information and education out there. During the 60's, while civil rights activists worked at changing the laws to be fair to all races, people like Richard Pryor was changing the way we think with his sometimes crude and direct stand up comedy. It made people deal face to face with the way things were, but made you laugh about it as well, and that can have a long term impact on the way people think that laws cannot.

    While the real news broadcasts fumbled and blustered over the political debacle, Indecision 2000 was able to (in a humerous way) make us face up to the fact that the system is flawed, that there is no good guys or bad guys, that the business of politics is politics, and with the general silly nature of elections in general.

    If we learn to laugh at our own mistakes, we just might have a better chance of not making the same mistake again.

  • That's great! (Score:4)

    by funny gal ( 325371 ) on Friday March 30, 2001 @02:42PM (#326128)
    Hehe, I just love The Daily Show!

    During the election coverage, they did a bit on the scientific "maps" that are always used...

    "As you can see, Bush has a clear victory..."

    Jon: "um, you also have to take into account the electoral votes from the large urban areas, and..."

    "Nation's RED, MAP DON'T LIE!"

    That cracked me up!
  • yeah.

    And, it's amazing how few people understand what the REAL "smart" shows are on TV. (of course, there are just a small handful of them)

    When I visit some of my relatives, I'll often turn to comedy central for the Daily Show, and I watched the Simpsons regularly at its peak. Those were the only two shows I watched with any regularity. The Daily Show was especially awesome when it had Kilborn (his new gig at CBS isn't as good) and some of those reporters like A. Whitney Brown. Hell, they're still good. And (this is important) they kept the "guest" segment of the show blissfully short.

    Anyway, I was often told to stop watching 'that junk' because "It rots the brain". Then, they'd watch the local evening newscast while priding themselves on their seriousness, and being "informed".

    They never grasped the irony of it all.

    --
    "May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house"

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