Stoned Slackers Know What's Going On

by Chris Bowers, Wed Sep 22, 2004 at 10:45:32 AM EDT

Bill O'Reilly recently characterized Daily Show viewers as stoned slackers (priceless interview), and claimed, as always, that he had research to back that statement up even though, as always, he never produced the research. However, the National Annenberg Election Survey has research on this subject, to the tune of over 19,000 people surveyed over the last two months, and reveals that Daily Show viewers are actually more informed about the campaign than any other group:Polling conducted between July 15 and September 19 among 19,013 adults showed that on a six-item political knowledge test people who did not watch any late-night comedy programs in the past week answered 2.62 items correctly, while viewers of Letterman answered 2.91, viewers of Leno answered 2.95, and viewers of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart answered 3.59 items correctly. That meant there was a difference of 16 percentage points between Daily Show viewers and people who did not watch any late-night programming.

The campaign knowledge test covered such topics as which candidate favors allowing workers to invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market, the income range at which John Kerry would eliminate the Bush tax cut, and which candidate is a former prosecutor.

"People who watch The Daily Show are more interested in the presidential campaign, more educated, younger, and more liberal than the average American or than Leno or Letterman viewers," said Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, a senior analyst at the Annenberg Public Policy Center , who conducted the research for this report. "However, these factors do not explain the difference in levels of campaign knowledge between people who watch The Daily Show and people who do not. In fact, Daily Show viewers have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers - even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration."

The best news show on television demonstrates its value yet again.

Tags: Media (all tags)

Comments

24 Comments

Sort by

permalink

Hey!

That is the EXACT topic of my Masters Thesis.

Late-Night talk shows as a means of shrinking an existing knowledge gap.

Kind of makes me sad that I started working on a campaign full-time, which has postponed the conclusion of the paper.

It would have been QUITE timely.

Tim

by Tim Tagaris 2004-09-22 10:59AM | 0 recs

permalink

Email this to the "real news" people.

They get so cocky about the late night talk shows.

by zobai 2004-09-22 11:12AM | 0 recs

permalink

LMAO!

that is so damned funny - i'm going to have to send that to everyone in my address book.

priceless!

by annatopia 2004-09-22 12:28PM | 0 recs

permalink

Re: LMAO!

In fact, I bet The Daily Show itself touts these findings, if only for the laugh potential.

by Mathwiz 2004-09-23 10:57AM | 0 recs

permalink

I can explain the difference

The Daily Show's audience being younger and better educated doesn't explain the difference, but the fact that they are more liberal does.

The more liberal a person is the less likely they are to rely upon and parrot the propaganda put out by the corporate press/media. It isn't simply that the corporate press/media is devoid of facts and filled with deception, though that is part of it. It is that the corporate press/media has a strong bias in favor of the ruling class and the right wing. This alienates the liberal reader/viewer and leads them to seek sources of information that are outside of the corporate press/media.

Thus, they become better informed.

by James Earl 2004-09-22 12:50PM | 0 recs

permalink

Re: Stoned Slackers Know What's Going On

The Daily Show is a knowing parody of TV news shows. Ergo, most of its humor comes from knowing TV news shows and knowing what wrong with them. So on the whole, critical newswatchers/readers will get the humor and others won't.

by Left for the Left 2004-09-22 03:27PM | 0 recs

permalink

All Of The Above!

Which is to say, I'm not the least bit surprised.

Ever since the Gulf War Study, "The More You Watch, The Less You Know," the corporate news media has been an open, exposed fraud. Not only have they done nothing to remedy the situtation, they've done their darndest to make it worse.

by Paul Rosenberg 2004-09-22 05:48PM | 0 recs

permalink

Annenberg also says men smarter than women

I'm not sure we should be trumpeting Annenberg polls. Only a couple days before releasing the late-night TV viewers poll Annenberg released a poll showing that men are significantly more informed and knowledgeable about politics and current events than women. So unless we're willing to accept those poll results too, we shouldn't be so quick to swallow these.

http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/

http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/naes/2004_03_gender-gap_09-17_pr.pdf

by smartliberal 2004-09-22 07:36PM | 0 recs

permalink

Re: Annenberg also says men smarter than women

smartliberal, ignoring a poll just because you don't like its results isn't a very smart or liberal thing to do.

by taradinoc 2004-09-22 11:40PM | 0 recs

permalink

Re: Annenberg also says men smarter than women

Better-informed about politics is not synonymous with smarter; it has more to do with being interested in different subjects. I see nothing implausible in these results, and nothing inherently sexist, either.
Later,
Alex

by Alex 2004-09-23 03:16PM | 0 recs