Only television critics, for instance, would have conferred this year’s prize for outstanding news and information programming to Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” — vaulting it over rivals like PBS’ “Frontline” and ABC’s “Nightline.”
It was a decision made on both merit and message. As my cross-town rival, Melanie McFarland of the Post-Intelligencer, said when presenting the award, at a time when the mainstream media seem cowed, Jon Stewart and company embody “a core of truth.” (Seattle Times)
And . . .
CBS News President Andrew Heyward said yesterday that he tried to be good-natured when the Television Critics Association decided to give Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” - a comedy series - the award for best news and information program Saturday night.
But the more he thought about it, he said, the more it bothered him.
The greatest wrong of all, he said, was not to acknowledge that “there are people around the world who literally now are risking their lives, risking death to bring back today’s story from Iraq.”
It would have been better, he said, to have declared no winner at all.
The award from critics points to a larger issue, said Heyward, about what is and what isn’t news.
“We have to accept that there is a broad array of news, pseudo-news, ersatz news, meta-news, and one of our roles over time is going to be to sort through all those things and actually say, ‘Okay, what are the facts?’” (New York Daily News)
Oh, I’m sorry, shouldn’t you already be determining what are the facts before reporting the news? Or is that why The Daily Show serves such a useful purpose? Not only does it provide the highlights of the news, but also a critique of the media itself. That’s not always a way to win friends.
No one’s arguing that reporters put themselves in danger to report from war zones. But that’s a straw man argument.
CBS is just bitter because The Daily Show has been able to interest an audience typically turned off to current events — an audience that 60 Minutes couldn’t capture without a time slot change, new hosts, and new format. CBS would love to be able to sell advertising slots for something other than Geritol and Depends on Sunday night.
Maybe that woman in Russia who reads the news topless would work, but I seem to recall CBS already having enough nipple issues this year.
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