Young Americans "have no idea what's going on", get news from Jon Stewart

http://mediamatters.org/items/200605250003

O'Reilly: Young Americans "have no idea what's going on" because they "get their news from Jon Stewart"

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During the May 23 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly asserted that "any Americans ages 18 to 24 have no idea what's going on," stating that they "get their news from Jon Stewart and their point of view from bomb-throwing entertainers." In fact, studies have shown that viewers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show with John Stewart are consistently better informed about current events than consumers of other media, and Daily Show viewers are considerably better educated than viewers of The O'Reilly Factor. Further, consumers of Fox News in general have been found to be significantly more misinformed about current events than consumers of other mainstream media.

In 2004, the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center released its National Annenberg Election Survey, which found Daily Show viewers to be better informed on campaign issues than consumers of other late-night television programs, newspapers, network news, or cable news. In a press release, Annenberg senior analyst Dannagal Goldthwaite Young said: "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 survey asked respondents to answer a six-question quiz designed to measure "political knowledge." Daily Show viewers ages 18 to 29 scored higher than those who consumed any amount of network news, any amount of newspapers, or one to three days of cable news; young Daily Show viewers scored the same as young viewers who watched four or more days of cable news. The survey did not say what percentage of Daily Show viewers regularly consumed news from other media outlets. Overall, Daily Show viewers scored the highest out of any group surveyed, with Daily Show viewers answering, on average, 60 percent of the questions correctly.

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Additionally, an October 2003 study conducted by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy (PIPA) found Fox News viewers were "significantly more likely to have misperceptions" about the Iraq war than all other media consumers. The study was "based on a series of seven US polls conducted from January through September" 2003 and measured respondents' "key perceptions and beliefs" on "US policy" in Iraq. The study found that "hose who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions." For instance, of the "three key misperceptions" -- which the study listed as "the beliefs that ... links between Iraq and al-Qaeda have been found, that WMD have been found in Iraq and that world public opinion approved of the US going to war with Iraq" -- Fox News watchers were found not only to be the "most likely to hold misperceptions," but "were more than twice as likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions." The PIPA study found that 80 percent of Fox News viewers held at least one of the three misperceptions.

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From the May 23 broadcast of The O'Reilly Factor:

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:shrug:

All TV news is the same - difference is, "Daily Show" is wilfully jokey. O'Reilly and ilk are not, which makes them even more of a joke at times.

that is something the White House press corps has no comprehension of. Daily's treatment of the news is vitally needed in a society where most accept the pablem the likes of O'Reilly spoons out.

..got their news from Bill O'Reilly! :crazy:

One of my 20 year old friends watch O'Reilly. It scares me.

*No one 18-24 knows what is going on beacuse they don't listen to me! Who are you going to believe: me, or your lying eyes?*

to the Daily Show. Also important to note is the supposed buying power of the coveted 18 - 24 demographic, one that makes up a majority of the Daily Show's 1+ million nightly viewership.

They are both fake news shows - except that Jon at least admits it's fake - I think people like that better.

I'd love to see what Keith does with this...

Olilly mak'n him sick from the stench.

The Paris Business Review, it was the first publication to criticize the knowledge of current events by American youth.

Paris Business Review -- that O'Liely made it up!

That is why he sits up so straight.

:crazy: Poor Bill. All these young people opting for the truth rather than the bullshit on The Factor.

...and I'm continually shocked and pleased at how knowledgable and savvy they are. Granted, it's a computer shop in New York City, so these kids are definitely in a position to be better informed than many of their peers elsewhere. They know what's going on. And they understand it all and have absorbed it in a way that O'Rile-y does not have the capacity for.

What I think is really going on here is that not one single kid between the ages of 18 and 24 has EVER in the history of the world tuned into the O'Rile-y "Factor" and so he figures he can throw shit-bombs at them...

... viewers of the Daily Show are likely more informed going in, before watching TDS, since many of the jokes wouldn't be nearly as funny to an uninformed idget. TDS is a cathartic release for a moderately-enlightened audience due to its obvious contrast to, and skewering of, the subservient lapdogs of modern American TV journalism.

p.s. You think O'Lielly intentionally chose this week for such a statement, knowing that TDS and Colbert are off-air for the week?

To know that the Daily Show & Colbert are off air this week, unless somebody on his staff pointed it out to him. And, I'm guessing that Olbermann, Colbert & the Daily Show are kind of persona-non-grata around the set with O'Reilly, so a staffer would be taking their live into their own hands if they mentioned it to O'Reilly.

I think you are right that he did not know they were on repeats this week--I'm sure he would have waited. He wants Jon Stewart, KO, and Colbert to make screw of him--he's desperate for publicity and, so sad to say, a little attention.

There's no such thing as bad publicity, especially when your own show is tanking anyway.

As you say, TDS isn't aimed at the viewer who's coming at it as a blank slate, it's aimed at the viewer who has picked up information (or lies) elsewhere and wants to see a fresh take on it. It's news about news. And, of course, it's comedy: as Jon Stewart said on Crossfire, "the show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls". Isn't it telling that O'Reilly sees a comedy show as his main opposition?

all of the shows on O'Lielly's network are puppets and many are cranks, so maybe he doesn't see the big difference.

i kinda miss Crank Yankers.

Sara Silverman was really funny as Hadassah.

"Our republic demands citizens pay attention in order for the best people to be elected. Is that happening today, when 64 percent of young Americans can name the American Idol winners but just 10 percent know who the speaker of the House is?"

A misinformed public is electing the wrong leaders, and the likes of Fox News, O'Lielly, and Limpbaugh are leading that charge. The Media Matters release links to all the relevant studies from the last couple of years showing the dearth of reality in the heads of Fox viewers.

His response was (I am paraphrasing very loosely, it has been months since I saw this):

"My show operates on the premise that our audience already has certain knowledge, or they wouldn't get the jokes."

NEVER gets the jokes.

(I have that American Perspectives episode on my hard drive.)

...is...

Questioner: "Jenny Anderson, from the New York Post. You frequently comment on how scary--"
Jon: "By the way--" *gestures at NY Daily News correspondent he just answered a question for and the Post questioner; they're on opposite sides of the room* "--it's good that they separated you."
Jenny: *at the Daily News* "Yeah you guys--you suck!"
*laughter*
Jon: "I know how that...I know how that gets. 's better."
Jen: "We put people in on our cover."
Jon: "This is the distance it needs to occur at. And--the Times, right here." *gestures at the center of the room* "Interesting, interesting...nice."
*applause*
Jon: "No, it's nice! I think it's good. By the way, uh, the New York Sun said they'll be here soon."
*laughter*
Jon: "They'll get here, you'll see."
Jenny: "They're still working on their headlines."
Jon: "It's gonna take time."
Jenny: "You frequently comment on how scary it is that a growing number of peo--young people get their, uh, news from you."
Jon: "Yes."
Jenny: "Now that you know that for a fact, do you look at your responsibility any more seriously?"
Jon: "Nononono--uhb--dbuh--I don't look at it as--"
Jenny: "Since you've commented on how bad the media is that actually--"
Jon: "Yes. Cleary: bad. And I meant you, mostly. But the thing is this--"
*laughter, applause*
Jon: "But--the issue is...um..."
*shot of Jenny; she's cracking up with laughter*
Jon: "...who better than an Australian to understand what we need to know? The issue is this: um...that I have found...uh...people...my complaint about when people say that most kids are getting their news from you is not that I'm worried they're getting their news from me--truth is, I know they're not. Because you can't. Because we don't do it. We just have the--there's not enough news to get. It's crumbs. And kids today get their news from...y'know, this is why, I think, y'know when we talk about the news I don't talk about the six o'clock broadcasts or the six-thirty broadcasts, 'cause that's not enough people don't get their information anymore . People don't get home at six-thirty anymore and go, 'Honey, what happened in the world today?' People know it already. They know it by seven, when they click onto Yahoo! or Google.

"Kids come...kids are more informed and more, uh, inundated by information--they learn by osmosis to a certain extent. And if they came to our show without knowledge, our show wouldn't make any sense to them--it just, it would be like Charlie Brown's teacher talking. It would just be, 'Wah-wah, wahwah wah-wah.' We assume so much knowledge on our show...we do not instruct, ever. Only in certain stories, we will lay out parameters, but we do not instruct, and we assume a knowledge base, and...if a kid--I'm very impressed with most young people's base of knowledge that I meet, and--the only study that I had heard's...validated any of it was Anenburg did a study that our viewers were better informed than people who actually watched the news. So...they're not gettin' their news from us. They're comin' to us to find out, y'know, what the funny is on it. 'Cause if we stopped being funny, they'd watch somethin' else. They'd stop the next day. Our mandate is to be funny. And when that ends, the show ends.

"And it will, believe me."
*laughter*

And Pox (deliberate typo) should be sued for consumer fraud. Their twisted facts and strange logic illustrate they are beyond what TAAS, Pravda and Izvestia were doing in the now defunct Soviet Union. Anyone taking O'Really and Pox seriously needs a mental evaluation and possible drivers license revocation. The insane should not be allowed to operate dangerous machinery. And yes they all want high powered weapons in their possession. Maybe it's me, but something is wrong, really fucking wrong when draft dodging punks pass themselves off as tough guys and so many nitwits believe them. What was that Menken said about no one ever going broke underestimating the intelligence of the American voter?

Jon Stewart.

What planet has this asshole been living on?

Where else can you get the truth? Even if it is couched in irony and sarcasm.

who watch The Daily Show are more likely to be informed about events than anyone else.

Most of them think the world is flat.

they think Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.

:banghead:

I'm fifty-six, we get two newspapers a day, all the cable, network and local TV news and C-SPAN, too. The Daily Show is highly informative. If they didn't take vacations and if you didn't really watch much else, you could get a sense of what's going on just from watching that, but as the other poster said, you really have to be reasonably informed to enjoy it and get the jokes.

My biggest problem is that at age 56 it's hard to stay up for The Colbert Report every night.

Comedy Central shows TDS and TCR four times a day. I'm in Central Time, so I can watch them starting at 10pm, midnight, 1pm, and I think at 7pm. God, those shows are so good and important I honestly think they should be 5 days a week and have guest hosts while Jon or Stephen are on vacation.

I know I'm 26 so I guess you weren't talking about me, but I also happen to get my TV news from TDS. It's the only way I can get my news on TV without shooting it with 12 gauge. Anyway a least I am intelligent enough to know the difference between a luffa and a falafel so @&#% OFF.

Just an idea I had:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1288850

Bill, you've got to stop doing that.

Go chase E.D. Hill around the or something.

He compares him to the Dixie Chicks? :)

If Nugent gave a free concert I doubt he'd draw 1% of what the Dixie Chicks would draw.

What an A**hole!

in the war on Christmas

when the "news media" churns out 24-hours a day of corporate/Republican propaganda and "news" on pretty white girls who went missing months and months ago, we have to turn to the source that actually informs us about what is going on.

:eyes:

Just wondering.

about 2 years ago I said it having never watched The Daily Show. I was sooooo wrong!

He said hes becoming the Cal Ripken of that category. :rofl:

Reading the post title - I was thinking that ought to get o'really yet another worst person in the world nod. Remember when o'really was on TDS w/ Jon? & Jon was teasing him about TDS viewers being better informed than fux viewers?

Who are bomb throwing celebrities? Do they make their own bombs or buy them on the black market? What buildings...cars...people have been harmed?

Inquiring minds......

Watch out whenever someone throws numbers about one demographic group without offering a single damn other example for comparison.

And I am aware of Ted Nugent's opinions. Is O'Reilly holding him up as some paragon of rational thought?

Yes, Bush is president because (among other calamitous and criminal factors) so many Americans are undereducated, underinformed, and fail to think critically based on factual evidence. What they are told to believe or feel matters so much more.

And I'm not restricting this observation to 18-24 year olds.

Falafel Master should start getting his news from Jon Stewart because it is clear that HE has no clue what's going on...

(...the times... they are a'changing...)

I work at a university. I am the mother of a few 20-somethings, plus a 17-yr-old and a 12-year-old. My house is regularly visited by young people. I took three young people to the polls in '04.

By far, these kids know more about the condition of their nation and the failings of its leaders and the global condition than ANY of my Boomer-or-older friends. In fact, I am regularly embarassed when I try to talk politics with people of my own generation. Also, young Republicans are far more open to discourse than Repukes my age. Even they will watch the Daily show, because they've figured out that O'Lielly is out of ideas, full of lies and obsolete.

When he continued to pick on schools, falsely accusing them of policy changes to bolster his childish "War on Christmas," when it was discovered that he was a letch of the lowest order, and when he called for the bombing of San Francisco, most moral, sane, intelligent people abandoned O'Lielly.

He'll be picking on old people and kittens next...

who watch his show - his core audience, 60 - 2000 year olds, who want to be flattered and need a "kids today" target to make them think that THEY are informed, and not swing voting sheeple complicit in the decline of our country into a hubristic charade.

and i have a 17 year old & a 20 year old who know what the time is.

My 70-year-old right-wing Dad (who claims to be a "Moderate" and takes offense when you try to tell him otherwise)is a big O'Reilly viewer. He still thinks they're going to find WMD's. And this is a person with a post-graduate education, too. He's WILLFULLY ignorant. My mother, meanwhile, who actually bothers to use a computer, at least for e mail, frequently forwards the "kid's today"-type messages and jokes you speak of.

As for *, they're disappointed and think he's incompetent, but they're not outraged and don't think he's criminal. * just isn't THEIR Conservative, that's all.

In fact, we might already be there."

Ya think so, huh? Well Bill, I couldn't agree more. Big trouble is already upon us, and any reflective surface will show you one of the biggest trouble-makers, if you just take a moment to gaze into it...

I emailed Steward when there were reports, CBS offered Steward the anchor post at CBS news. That would be a terrible waste of his talents. Censhorship is not a promotion. Now Steward is free to tell the truth, as he so bravely did to the talking heads at CNN. Jon please don't waste your talents and freedoms, you now enjoy at Comedy Central.

and Colbert and Stewart are his favorites on TV! He follows leftwing politics like a hawk and even took time out from his new Xbox 365,550,245 or whatever to have an hour long conversation with me about how to impeach the president and how to keep Roy Moore from becoming governor in Alabama. I was amazed. I thought he was just a teen who loved Comedy Central's teen movies and Reno 911 and Southpark. Gee, was I wrong! Our last long conversation was on the basic tenets of Marxism. He apropos of nothing suddenly asked me "What is the difference between democratic socialism and communism? I think I'm a democratic socialist." He can't wait to vote in the Democratic primary on 6 June, his first opportunity. He supports Clark and Kucinich and detests Clinton, Lieberman, et al. Pretty smart for a video game addict, eh? He first came out of his silent stage watching an episode of the Nancy Grace Show when he declared "Nobody would care if that girl wasn't rich and blonde." Then one night the TV was out in his room and he knocked on my door and asked if he could watch TV until 11pm. I asked what he wanted to watch and it was Southpark and then Jon Stewart and Colbert! He won't even be 20 for 3 months and has only just completed H.S. and one semester of community college! I am so proud of him, I may get him a Che tee shirt for his birthday.

... They are probably more informed about what's going on than most news anchors!

O'Lielly needs to put that falafel down and go do nappy time...

That has got to be the most ironic sh*t I have ever heard.

Can't help but shine a light on his inadequacies.

I talk with my mother(83) and her freinds once in a while and they are really uninformed . They may be less informed thatn the young since they dont watch these shows. They rely on a half hour of network news which barely skims the surface of news.

Hannity: welcome to HANNITY and clms, and to night we have a report that the daily show is a good resourse of news, and that the o'Reilly has false facts.
Colmes: acctually, the report is well founded and is mostly correct, also-
Hannity: Stop right there you liberals and your facts, why now your ssying ridiculous things like fox is Right wing!
Colmes: but today fox recieved 5million from the Gop-
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES
Colmes: hey let me go...ugh...oof..oh.

This man should have his butt kicked up and down the street for this latest flaming bag of feces.

That's OK O'Reilly - keep merginalizing yourself - I have no complaints.

Apparently Bill is admitting that Jon is more entertaining that he is - and I agree completely!

Of course Daily Show views don't know what's going on in O'Reilly's point of view. We think that things like Cheney hitting somebody in the face (and getting the victim to apologize for getting in the way, OMG WTF?!?!) with a half-ounce of high-velocity birdshot, for example, is news, and that the "Godless Atheists Holy War on Christmas/Easter/Saint Andrew's Day/Palm Sunday/Lent/Saint Patrick's Day/Ash Wednesday" are inflammatory distractions from real news.

You see, fellow TDS and TCR viewers, we are not in O'Reilly's world. And until we are, we just won't get the "real" news. News like Iraq had a giant arsenal of NBC weapons couples to hundreds of ICBMs. That Saddam had a LifeCall-style ('I've fallen! And I can't get up!) launch button around his neck that would immediately fire said weapons. That every Thursday in Baghdad Saddam went down to the market square with a couple of strategic nuclear warheads and held an auction where various international fundamentalist terrorist groups bid on the warheads like stock traders on Wall Street. That Reaganomics work. That he actually is 'fair and balanced'. And until we accept the 'real' news, we will just keep being distracted by facts and reality. Both of which, as Stephen Colbert notes, have a liberal bias.

Not only do O'Reilly viewers not 'get it', they are totally unaware of not 'getting it'. Most people, when confronted with a complex situation will at least sense that there is much more going on than meets the eye, and are aware that they are not 'getting it'. Like looking at one of those stereogram pictures. Maybe you can't see the Statue of Liberty in 3D, but some subconscious 'tickle' keeps you looking for the pattern that you know is there. Neocon savants just see a pretty bunch of dots and can't conceive of anything past it.

Trust me. When the rich have all the money and the 99% of the population that controls 5% of the nation's wealth finally revolts, the neocons will be totally bewildered. "I can't imagine why hordes of poverty-stricken people are violently overthrowing the government and slaughtering the rich!" And they won't understand why the police and Army is joining the people in the revolt. "We let them apply for food stamps! Why aren't they dying to protect us?"

Years ago here was a show called "That Was The Week That Was", and it offered a scathing review of the political stupidities that were happening.. It "flew too close to the sun", and was cancelled.. Remember "Laugh-In"? ..It was piled on for the whole time it ran... Remember "The Smother's Brothers' Hour"? They threatened to quit because they were getting censored, and eventually they DID shut the top-rated show down.

Hypocrites aheve always "worried" mightily about "comedy" shows..

The thing they have always "misunderestimated"?

For people to "get" sarcasm, parody, irony, and all the other wonderful things that "the Daily Show" IS...you HAVE to know a LOT about what's going on :)

Rock ON , Jon !!!

ignorant of even the most basic issues facing us today.

We really need to have an alternative on the airwaves...not something that's an ideologically liberal equivalent to FOX, but an independent (and corporate-free) news network that does what it's supposed to do in a free society: inform and educate, not distract and manipulate.

Yeah...I know. That's gonna happen any minute now. :rollseyes:

"This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful."

Edward R. Murrow, 1958

for making us laugh over the astounding hypocrisy of the msm and the machinations of our political leaders. We need the comic relief.