Jon Stewart describes The Daily Show, his pride and joy, as fake news... but is that really what it is? The show draws its satire and humor from recent headlines, political mishaps, and news around the world. The writers of The Daily Show openly reject the notion that it's a source of news for young people. It does, in fact, provide its audience with information about the ongoings of our nation and the world as a whole. Still, even Stewart argues that it's not actual news.
"Our show would not be valuable to people who didn't understand the news because it wouldn't make sense. We make assumptions about your level of knowledge that... if we were your only source of news, you would just watch our show and think, 'I don't know what's happening.'"Out of curiosity, I asked my sister (Ashley) to watch The Daily Show the other night. Ash has never shown any interest in the news, so I knew that it would be safe to test Stewart's theory on her. As he predicted, she had absolutely no idea what was going on. When I sat her down in front of Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report (which is said to be even less of a news source than The Daily Show), she was even more confused.
All of this time I thought that these shows were less satire and more comedic journalism that actually qualified as news, but I guess I was wrong. As sad as I am to admit this, I guess fake news only makes sense if you pay attention to the real news.
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