Quality Journalism from Jon Stewart

Lee Sigelman @ The Monkey Cage has a post commenting on a report by the "Project for Excellence in Journalism" on The Daily Show. (which screens in NZ on C4 Tue-Fri 10pm)

The Daily Show is one of my favourite shows but the idea that it should be taken as journalism is laughable. It's a comedy show that works as a meta-text rather than an actual text as it spends most of its time looking at the media's coverage of events rather than the actual event.

This report happened because in a poll of which journalists were admired the most, host Jon Stewart came in fourth. Really, this is reflective of the state of the rest of media rather than on the Daily Show. The questions that the report should be asking is why does no one admire the media anymore?

An interesting stat though on the front page...

Daily Show viewers are highly informed, an indication that The Daily Show is not their lone source of news. Regular viewers of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report were most likely to score in the highest percentile on knowledge of current affairs.

Seems that people who watch the show are quite likely to get their news from other sources as well and are able to distinguish between satire and reality.

The conclusions of the report seem to be: The Daily Show has a skewed focus on Washington politics and can completely ignore other big stories (such as the Virginia Tech shootings - with good reason, there is nothing funny about that). The Daily Show also has a liberal bias, the show producers say this is because the show is anti-establishment. It'll be interesting to see if the show changes if Obama wins the White House in November.

Finally, I pulled up the Wikiquote page for The Daily Show, it has a section that has some taglines. Let's see how The Daily Show defines itself:

• More people get their news from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart... Than probably should.
• The Daily Show - the only news program with no credibility left to lose.
• The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. We're getting a helicopter... soon.
• The Most Important News Show... Ever.

On to the last city!

After months of playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas I've finally made it to the last city (of three - this one is based on Las Vegas). Normally, I wouldn't bother posting this but with a bunch of controversy over the latest GTA I couldn't resist. My normal game experience normally ends in frustration as I fail to use my rocket launcher to shoot down a helicopter and end up blowing myself up because I can't aim the frigging thing.

Frustrated, I then go out and run over a bunch of children or force some prostitutes to eat some defecation. (OK, you can't do either thing in the game)

There is a comment on David Farrar's blog that's interesting. It's from a "Fletch" who quotes an interview with a former army guy about using first person shooters as part of training for army, police, etc... Well GTA isn't actually a first person shooter (bar a couple of occasions when you have to go into that mode) - you don't actually have to aim your gun - press a button and it'll happen automatically. Press circle and bullets come out and your target dies. The subject matter in the game is no worse than what you'll find in movies. I think the idea of the "immersion" effect of games is no different to the effect found in movies when you watch them in the right conditions (lights out, no distractions). So why should you attack video games when they are so much more artificial?

Anyway, I actually wanted to take a look at Family First, the organisation that's driving the controversy. Unfortunately they're another one of those organisations that seem to consider family values and christian belief one and the same. I hate these guys, I think if they ever want to be taken more seriously they need to actually divorce themselves from their christian side and distance themselves from the religious right.You do not have to be a Christian family to be a loving family that promotes good values.

These are the people that tried to have Californication banned (they were unsuccessful, though they did manage to get a large number of advertisers to withdraw). I took a glance through their recent news to take a look.

This article talks about a study that showed children watching MTV or BET (does BET even screen in New Zealand??) are exposed to something bad once every 38 seconds. Family First add their position at the bottom.

This material can be viewed free-to-air in NZ on C4 , and also on Sky TV e.g. Juice TV etc. Broadcasting standards in NZ are failing our children.

You can't directly compare C4 with the American MTV! C4 complies their programming from a wide variety of sources. They actually play music videos which MTV hardly does. MTV rather shows "a variety of pop culture, youth culture, and reality television shows aimed at adolescents and young adults" (wikipedia) which includes a lot of shit - shows like A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila that has 32 male and females vying for the love of a bisexual woman (this is actually screened in NZ on Sky on their MTV channel which may hit that mark mentioned before - that channel should be banned not because it's immoral but of the awful progamming). C4 and Juice TV would be nowhere near the "once every 38 seconds" mark that Family First is implying.

OK, I've completely gone off topic. I hate Family First, we get it. Watch this Daily Show segment on Gran Theft Auto IV.