Q. Does it concern you when people say they get their news and information from late- night talk shows?A. My take is that it’s not necessarily bad. The National Annenberg Election Survey, which is run by Kathleen Hall Jamieson here in the Public Policy Center, included the question, ‘Where do you get your news from?’ and it turned out that
regular viewers of “The Daily Show” were more informed than the average citizen and more informed than people who consumed their news exclusively from other places. My argument is that if that’s the only place you get your news, you’re in trouble. But I think there’s something about that show that almost requires you to get news and information from other places because to get the joke you sort of have to get engaged and I think what “The Daily Show” does is it provides great commentary—probably the best commentary we have in this country right now on television in terms of politics. Most importantly, Jon Stewart has become probably the strongest spokesperson for the degradation of the quality of the news in the U.S. ...
I think the cat’s out of the bag. I don’t think we’re going to go back to traditional news as the only way to get information. I think the whole nature of news is changing. If you know where the information is coming from and it’s good information and it’s giving you different points of view and it’s usable information, then if it comes from entertainment, great. I think
if you use those standards, “The Daily Show” would be viewed as a pretty useful contribution to American democracy. And I would say a good deal of what’s on traditional news would not be viewed as useful to American democracy.http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/2005/022405/cover.html
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