Television News - Comedy Central's Take

As far as I can tell, there are a variety of "watchdogs" out there that attempt to hold the media responsible for their mistakes. I think that they have been somewhat successful; however, there is still room for improvement. I think that one example of a major success of these groups has been identifying FoxNews as a conservative network, and then increasing public awareness of this fact. Nowadays, it is fairly common knowledge that FoxNews has a conservative take on the news. Two popular media watchdogs are the Colbert Report and Daily Show.

My favorite parts of the Daily Show and Colbert Report are when they hold people accountable. The shows are similar, so I'll pull an example from the Daily Show. For instance, in this clip (go to the 3:05 mark), FoxNews' Chris Wallace brings up the fact that his employer has just hired Karl Rove. Wallace then asks if Jon Stewart has any questions that he would like to ask him. Stewart replies, "Does lying feel bad?" For the rest of the clip, Jon Steward makes Wallace ends up regretting that he even mentioned Rove. It is clear that Wallace and FoxNews aren't going to ask Rove any tough questions about his dealings with the Valerie Plame scandal or anything else. In my opinion, this is The Daily Show at it's best. It's funny, edgy, and it makes a point.

The shows often have insightful political analysis and dig out the truth when other places are too timid. On the other hand, sometimes I feel like the shows are wasting my time. For instance, the recent Colbert-Stewart-Conan O'Brian feud about who made Huckabee was not even very funny. Okay, it was a little funny. But the point was to kill time because they don't have any writers; I didn't feel like I learned anything useful. Filler pieces like that don't do it for me. There's a whole world outside the US that I could be learning about. In general, American news is way to US-centric. I realize Comedy Central's goal is to be funny and not edgy, and I'm not going to hold Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert responsible for my education, but I wish they had found a better way to use the time.