It happened again last week. Actual news reporting that is, appearing in prime time, based on well researched data and supported by actual footage of the events. On the downside, it appeared not on any "news show" but, lamentably again, on The Daily Show.
Don't get me wrong - I love The Daily Show. And Jon Stewart, who I never thought was very funny before TDS, is perfect in this format. A friend suggested recently after a lame swipe at Twitter and social networking in general that perhaps TDS had "jumped the shark", but I disagree. Good comedy lives on the edge, and TDS has made a living at pointing a finger at ironic hypocracy across the political spectrum very effectively.
The "entertaining" of news goes back quite a ways (the movie Network nailed this in 1976), and the news industry has lived as part of corporate interests to the detriment of its role as the fourth estate, as protector and watchdog for the public interest. The death of national newspapers all over the nation speaks to the inability of the news business to remain relevant as a commercially successful entertainment venue in today's vast empire of digital offerings. I stopped watching network news or reading any but local Weekly newspaper several years ago because I found that things that I thought were newsworthy were regulated to the back pages if they made the paper at all.
Anyway, TDS again demonstrates that even though it is comedy, not news, it does a better job at reporting what's important than most if not all "responsible" news outlets:
A few good articles on this particular TDS spot are found here, here and my favorite right here.
