The Daily Show v. network news

Posted By Mark I. Levenstein Friday, October 6, 2006 - 6:11 PM Share

Most 20-somethings already suspect you can get as much information from The Daily Show as you can from network news. Now they have proof. A new study, "No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Broadcast Television Coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election Campaign," by Julia R. Fox of Indiana University, finds that The Daily Show has the same amount of substantive content per news story as the traditional broadcasters. In fact:

The proportion of each story devoted to substance [on The Daily Show] was greater than in the network news stories," according to the report.

Although the entire paper won't be published until next summer, there is enough in the IU press release to make it clear that the sun may have set on the era of network news. And if that isn't truthiness, I don't know what is.

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