The Daily Show as Legitimate Journalism

Jon Stewart makes no pretense that he’s all about the entertainment, but I think the article is right — he does ask the tough questions when the time comes and shows good insight into issues.

The venerable Sunday morning news shows, oftentimes featuring some of the most reputable people in journalism, largely go through a formulaic process, repeated weekly with their guests. The crack team of researchers will provide a number of quotes made by said interviewee appearing to contradict each other that the guest will then evade and stonewall against by jumping through any number of grammatical, contextual, semantic, and logical hoops. While The Daily Show has a more varied roster of guests from week to week, the Sunday morning talk shows routinely have decision makers and opinion leaders on to explain themselves. Put it this way; who would you rather have interview David Addington, Alberto Gonzalez, Donald Rumsfeld, or Dick Cheney? I would feel much more confident that an interview with Stewart would reveal more of a subject than an interview with any of the Sunday morning hosts. If British talk show host David Frost can cement the legacy of a disgraced U.S. president, then certainly Jon Stewart would be able to shed light on some of our more pressing national issues.

I’m guessing that some of the people mentioned would rather only be interviewed by someone who was tossing slow pitches over the fat part of the plate