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Politics is a joke anyway

9 comments on Politics is a joke anyway

Politics is a joke anyway
: I often argue that the audience wants opinion and attitude admitted in its news and I use FoxNews and blogs as my proof.

Here’s more proof, the highlight from a new Pew study on consumption of political news:

For Americans under 30, these comedy shows are now mentioned almost as frequently as newspapers and evening network news programs as regular sources for election news.

So much for stuffy old anchors. Should Brian Williams be the next anchor of NBC or Howard Stern?

: More from Pew:

The 2004 presidential campaign is continuing the long-term shift in how the public gets its election news. Television news remains dominant, but there has been further erosion in the audience for broadcast TV news. The Internet, a relatively minor source for campaign news in 2000, is now on par with such traditional outlets as public television broadcasts, Sunday morning news programs and the weekly news magazines. And young people, by far the hardest to reach segment of the political news audience, are abandoning mainstream sources of election news and increasingly citing alternative outlets, including comedy shows such as the Daily Show and Saturday Night Live, as their source for election news.

Today

9 responses to “Politics is a joke anyway”

  1. Dan Herzlich Avatar
    Dan Herzlich

    The Internet, as you put it, is just as slanted if not more so than mass media. Stories that are posted on blogs conveniently ignored important new items. You say that endorsements don’t need to be publicized. Considering that almost of the endorsement news has been centered around Dean, it’s obvious why you want to hide this coverage.
    DH – I don’t feel jealous that I don’t have lunch with Clay Shirky and Jay Rosen. I don’t subscribe to the Phoney Baloney Liberals Who Lunch movement. The self-referential quality of the blogosphere is well-documented, and it serves to hide unpopular points of view.

  2. Eric Deamer Avatar
    Eric Deamer

    Dan Herzlich:
    Have you considered using the handle “captain buzzkill” on the internet?
    Did you even read the part of the post where it said that people are getting their information from news organizations on the internet, not from blogs?
    Do real true-blue liberals skip lunch? Do you think that’s a good idea? Some say it’s the most important meal.
    Is yours the type of “unpopular viewpoint” that the internet hides? I can’t imagine why.

  3. rivlax Avatar
    rivlax

    As usual, Pew has missed the point. Sure, people get a lot of their political news on the Internet from traditional news sites (MSNBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, AP, etc.), but, increasingly, they are sent to those stories by bloggers they trust. The editing function of the major bloggers is a phenomenon that has been almost entirely ignored by the so-called researchers. And, sure, they’re biased too. But that’s a good thing in this case because it makes available hundreds of stories that hover beneath the first tier of “national” stories. On a given day, for instance, check out lucianne.com and see how many wire stories that never make the A-wire get linked via some small newspaper’s Web site. That’s the power of bloggers and sites like lucianne.com.

  4. Andy Freeman Avatar
    Andy Freeman

    > Should Brian Williams be the next anchor of NBC or Howard Stern?
    Neither. (Stern doesn’t have the required experience as an anchor.)
    Jon Stewart is the biggest dog in the minor leagues.

  5. Tom Grey Avatar
    Tom Grey

    Why doesn’t Pew, or you Jeff, ask about policies? What, if anything, is the difference between a Dean and a Clark (or Kerry Gephardt Edwards Lieberman) policy? ANY policy?
    The PEOPLE focus by the news media is unrelenting, and annoying (to this policy wonk).

  6. Steel Magnolia Avatar
    Steel Magnolia

    “Finally, the survey finds that endorsements don’t matter to people. Then why do they get such coverage?”
    Endorsements may not matter to the voters themselves, but they do matter when it comes to the manpower available to a candidate on the get-out-the-vote front.
    Note the current dust-up between Dean & Gephardt over union support. Those endorsements come with busloads — or perhaps I should say hives — of worker bees.

  7. Tim Gannon Avatar
    Tim Gannon

    Do people have to care about the primaries? We (those who follow politics) tend to miss (not talk to, not relate) those people who could care less.
    In fact the I don’t cares (or it does’s matter) could have won the last 2 presidential elections.
    This is our own ‘bias’ coming through.

  8. button Avatar
    button

    Comedy shows– for better or worse, I believe it.
    Jon Stewart.
    Bloggers do serve an editing function if only because there’s tons of stuff out there.

  9. ken Avatar
    ken

    It’s a shame, but I’m already burnt out on the election. I wish the Democrats would just pick their hapless victim and get the show on the road. The coverage from last night was a joke. Big headlines abour Dean taking out his “anger” on a voter. I got excited. Then I read the account and even I, a Republican, shrugged it off as some Republican guy trying to bait Dean.
    And the Dean, Sharpton exchange was just silly.
    Even the press is so bored with its usual script and with this circus that it’s trying to sex it up. Lord.
    At this point, I’d rather all the candidates be seated and FORCED to take a test on where they actually stand. They HAVE to answer each question directly. And they CAN’T cheat or riff off of or attack the other candidates.
    Until then, I’m just gonna blog about cleaning my bathroom.