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| Version | User | Scope of changes |
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| Nov 14 2007, 1:46 AM EST (current) | AshleighC | 67 words added, 26 words deleted |
| Nov 14 2007, 1:18 AM EST | AshleighC |
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by Ashleigh Crowther, posted November 14, 2007.
Photo: Jon Stewart, December 11, 2005. Photographed by Martin Monroe. Source: flickr.com. Permission: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 License.Many have criticized Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for its perceived liberal bias, including Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard, and The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol. However, in this reporter's investigation of The Daily Show's 2007 guest list to date, the political persuasions of guests invited onto the show are remarkably balanced.
For the year 2007, The Daily Show has taped 138 new episodes. (The first episode of 2007 aired on January 8, and the last new episode aired on November 1.) Those 138 episodes (numbered 12001-12138 on The Daily Show's online video archive) have featured 140 in-studio guest appearances (some guests appeared twice, but are counted as separate appearances.) Of those 140 guest appearances, 51 were deemed by this reporter to have outstanding political biases or affiliations. Of those 51, 25 were conservative or Republican, while 27 were liberal or Democratic.
Guests were not categorized as liberal or conservative based on what they said during their Daily Show appearance, but based on their general partisan affiliation or ideological orientation. Criteria for judging whether a guest was liberal or conservative considered the guest's affiliation with a political party, affiliation with a liberal or conservative organization, expression of support for liberal or conservative causes, or public statement of preference for the liberal, conservative, Democratic, or Republican viewpoint.
Of the 25 conservative guest appearances, 1516 were political candidates, administration officials, employees of the Republican Party, or government employees who had been affiliated with the Republican Party or had expressed support of the Republican Party. These include Senator John McCain, former Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, Representative Ron Paul, Bush speech-writer Michael Gerson, and Second Lady Lynne Cheney, among others.
Of the 27 liberal appearances, 16 were political candidates, administration officials, employees of the Democratic or Green Party, or government employees who had been affiliated with the Democratic or Green Party or had expressed support of those parties. These include former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, Senator Barack Obama, Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator Joe Biden, Senator Chris Dodd, Senator John Kerry, and former presidential nominees Al Sharpton, and Ralph Nader, among others.
The remaining appearances were journalists, media commentators, celebrities, or celebritiesforeign leaders who have expressed support of either liberal or conservative viewpoints. TheseThere includewere 11 liberal appearances, including Jack Cafferty, an anti-Bush commentator on CNN; Michael Moore, a liberal filmmaker and director of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko; and actor Ben Affleck, who endorsed John Kerry for president in 2004; among others. There were 9 conservative appearances, including Stephen Hayes, a conservative columnist for the Weekly Standard and biographer of Vice President Cheney; Jack Cafferty, an anti-Bush pundit on CNN; Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard; and MichaelVicente MooreFox, a liberal filmmakerthe andconservative directorPresident of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko, among others.Mexico.
The balance of the show's guest list might suggest that The Daily Show is more balanced than similarly-structured TV shows like The O'Reilly Factor, another program that covers news with an in-studio panel of guest commentators. In May 2006, a Media Matters for America study determined that The O'Reilly Factor featured notably more Republican and conservative guests than Democratic or progressive guests, and suggested that the unbalanced guest list defined the show as imbalanced. Using this logic, the equal representation of liberals and conservatives on The Daily Show would define the show as balanced.
Not so, said Matthew Sheffield, executive editor of NewsBusters, a website aimed at tracking liberal media bias funded by the Media Research Center, a self-proclaimed conservative watchdog group. "Source ideological ratios can be interesting when examining journalists' usage of them as authority/expert figures," Sheffield noted. "Regarding Stewart's show, however, the ratio question is not relevant, especially since he invites many conservatives on his show to provide comedic foils for himself. With liberal/Democrat guests, he takes more of a buddy-buddy approach or hits them for being insufficiently left-wing."
Noel Sheppard, a conservative blogger at NewsBusters, agrees that the show is off-putting to conservatives, regardless of the balance of the guest list. "I used to be a big fan of the program, and never missed it," he admitted.
Eventually, the show lost its appeal for Sheppard. "Some time in 2004 I believe, maybe because it was a presidential election year, Jon's biases became too overbearing, and I stopped watching it. It seemed virtually every gag was bashing Bush, Cheney, or someone in the Administration."
Sheppard suggested that The Daily Show cultivates a biased audience by offending conservatives. "If a comedian like Stewart wants a balanced audience, his targets should be spread as evenly as possible or else one demographic is going to stop seeing it as humor, and, instead, feel put upon."
The numbers support Sheppard's argument. In a 2004 Pew Research Center study of viewers who said they "like the news to reflect their political views," 14% of liberals turned to The Daily Show, while only 2% of conservatives did. However, viewers at that time were still evenly distributed across party lines: 3% of Democrats, 3% of Republicans, and 3% of Independents reported watching The Daily Show.
By 2006, the distribution had changed. A Pew study found that 41% of The Daily Show viewers identifed as liberal, while only 19% identifed as conservative.
However, some view The Daily Show as refreshing in an ever-deteriorating journalistic landscape. Rachel Smolkin of the American Journalism Review wrote an article for their June/July 2007 issue titled "What the Mainstream Media Can Learn from Jon Stewart." She argued that legitimate journalists could learn one thing from "fake journalist" Jon Stewart: to pursue the truth boldly and without fear or self-consciousness.
In the article, Smolkin quoted Hub Brown of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University: "I think there is much less courageousness than there needs to be. There are people out there who stick out because of their fearlessness."
Smolkin suggested that journalists' "slavish devotion" to objectivity often restricts them from telling an effective story. The Daily show is not limited by this convention. On its website, The Daily Show makes clear that it has no interest in traditional standards of journalism, calling itself "the nightly half-hour series unburdened by objectivity, journalistic integrity or even accuracy."
Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, told Smolkin that The Daily Show's freedom from objectivity helps it cut to the truth of the story. "So-called fake news makes fun of that concept of balance. It's not afraid to have a bullshit meter and to call people spinners or liars when they deserve it. I think as a consequence some viewers find that helpful and refreshing and hilarious."
Sheffield, however, thinks this kind of admiration of Stewart is troubling. "Even though he does not claim objectivity, Stewart claims to speak for the 'truth,'" remarked Sheffield. "To a non-liberal, it is obvious that what Stewart considers "truth" is merely his opinion. He very clearly lacks understanding of both conservative and libertarian philosophies. In this way, he sets the example for his viewers in denouncing things of which he has little understanding. For this reason, he cannot be an arbiter of 'truth.'"
But does anyone really think that Jon Stewart is "an arbiter of the truth?" Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a media watchdog group that monitors bias and censorship, denied this reporter's request for an interview with a short but telling remark. Isabel MacDonald, Communications Director at FAIR, said, "We really only deal with actual news media- not shows that are explicitly entertainment."
However, a 2004 Pew study concluded that young Americans are in fact turning to The Daily Show for information. "Comedy programs are increasingly becoming regular sources of news for younger Americans, and are beginning to rival mainstream news outlets within this generation," the study declared. In fact, 21% of people surveyed under age 30 said they "regularly" learned about the 2004 campaign from comedy shows like The Daily Show. And even though The Daily Show is "fake news," an April 15 Pew study found that its viewers were among the most informed news consumers.
In this way, Stewart straddles two dueling personae: journalist and entertainer. However, some take issue with Stewart for self-righteously pointing the finger at TV journalists, then retreating behind the "I'm just a comedian!" defense whenever the criticism shifts in his direction. Ken Tucker wrote an article for New York ("You Can't Be Serious!" November 1, 2004) arguing this point, and Ted Koppel suggested the same in a July 2004 interview with Stewart during the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Stewart's October 2004 appearance on CNN's Crossfire provides a clear example for this argument. Stewart seemed to be a concerned media critic when he slammed hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala for their "partisan hackery" and "helping the politicians and the corporations." When Carlson and Begala fired back by criticizing Stewart's interview skills in a recent Daily Show episode, Stewart quipped, "if you want to compare your show to a comedy show, you're more than welcome to."
In Sheffield's opinion, Stewart cannot have it both ways. "Essentially what he's doing is sitting back and taking potshots at others and then running away as soon as they return fire," he said. "This is classic "bad faith" behavior."
Sources:
"Cable and Internet Loom Large in Fragmented Political News Universe." 11 Jan. 2004. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 13 Nov. 2007. <http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=200>.
"CNN Cafferty Files 6/8/06." YouTube. 13 Nov. 2007. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uPwMMl588I>.
"DNC: A serious interview with Jon Stewart." Lost Remote. Posted by Cory Bergman. 12 Nov. 2007. <http://www.lostremote.com/archive/001905.html>.
Indecision 2008 website. 11 Oct. 2007. Comedy Central. 13 Nov. 2007. <http://www.indecision2008.com/blog.jhtml?c=vc&videoId=111141>.
"Jon Stewart on Crossfire: 'Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.'" 15 Oct. 2004. Media Matters for America. 13 Nov. 2007. <http://mediamatters.org/items/200410160003>.
MacDonald, Isabel. Communications Director, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
"News Audiences Increasingly Politicized." 8 June 2004. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 13 Nov. 2007. <http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=215>.
"Online Papers Modestly Boost Newspaper Readership." 30 July 2006. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 13 Nov. 2007. <http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=1067>.
"Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions." 15 April 2007. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 13 Nov. 2007. <http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=319>.
"Ron Paul on The Daily Show." 5 June 2007. Crooks and Liars. 13 Nov. 2007. <http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/06/05/ron-paul-on-the-daily-show/>.
Savillo, Rob. "Progressives Factored Out: The O'Reilly Factor dominated by Republicans, conservatives." 22 May 2006. Media Matters for America. 12 Nov. 2007. <http://mediamatters.org/items/200605220001>.
Sheffield, Matthew. Executive editor of NewsBusters. Interviewed 12 Nov. 2007. <http://www.newsbusters.org/>.
Sheppard, Noel. Blogger for NewsBusters. Interviewed 12 Nov. 2007. <http://www.newsbusters.org/blog/26>.
Smolkin, Rachel. "What The Mainstream Media Can Learn From Jon Stewart." June/July 2007.American Journalism Review. 12 Nov. 2007. <http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4329>.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart website. 12 Nov. 2007. <http://www.thedailyshow.com/>.
Tucker, Ken. "You Can't Be Serious!" 1 Nov. 2007. New York. 12 Nov. 2007. <http://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/tv/10180/>.
