Comparing "1/2 Hour" with the Daily Show

There are several key differences between the FoxNews "1/2 Hour News Hour" and The Daily Show. As I mentioned in the last post, The Daily Show uses actual people and has them defend their beliefs, as well as criticizing both conservatives and liberals. One other major difference is that The Daily Show uses actual news clips and critiques them, catches people in lies, and makes a point of showing dishonesty and prejudice. Here is one such example of TDS using actual footage to demonstrate a point about how Republicans are attacking Democrats. Note that Jon Stewart analyzes the way Romney presents his resignation speech (around the 2 minute mark, Stewart begins addressing Romney's resignation speech, and at about the 3 minute mark, he gets the part about the Democrats):


Now this is a nice piece of journalism that catches Romney implying that supporting the Democrats is akin to supporting the terrorists. This is downright offensive to Democrats and completely unsupported by evidence. By broadcasting this clip and analyzing it closely, Stewart is holding Romney accountable for his claims. He then goes on to address Romney's claims about faith in god and how that affects a country's government.

The viewers have been primed and are now ready to bash Mitt Romney for his comments. The Daily Show then segues into a segment with Jason Jones in which they discuss Mitt Romney being a douchebag.



I suppose it's also worth noting that The Daily Show at least shows some self-deprecation and Jones calls himself a douchebag, as well as Jon Stewart. Clearly, had The Daily Show not preceding the Jason Jones segment with clips of Romney demonizing Democrats, it would have come across as baseless slander. Instead, I think most viewers feel little sympathy for Romney.

If the "1/2 Hour" program wanted, they could use a similar format to promote conservative ideas. For instance, one major claim of conservative media is that mainstream media has a liberal bias. So, the "1/2 Hour" could try to find clips that demonstrate liberal media bias and analyze them. They could show clips to present evidence to the audience, and then crack jokes. However, I have not found any clips of "1/2 Hour" using real media segments. Here is one way in which FoxNews has promoted the idea of liberal media bias:


I think that this segment could be much stronger if they could actually find a clip of a reporter blatantly demonstrating liberal media bias. If liberal media bias is as rampant as conservatives claim, it shouldn't be too hard to find. Instead, they go straight for the jokes. As for actual evidence, they do loosely paraphrase a Democrat, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, who did say that if the surge works, it'll be a problem for the Democrats to pass legislation to set a timetable to end the war. True, what Clyburn said wasn't particularly well phrased, but it was taken out of context. However, FoxNews can't claim this as evidence of liberal media bias since he is a Democrat and not part of the media.

All told, it is a weak attempt to demonstrate liberal bias in the media. Most critical viewers watching this FoxNews program will not be able to take it seriously or consider it a watchdog program on par with the Daily Show without some evidence. Perhaps that's why it didn't last very long.