Today the Washington Post weighs in on a topic that will never make any List of Underreported Stories: The Daily Show (SNL/Colbert/Maher) Effect. I have a quibble with this bit:
For those who don’t follow the media closely, satirical shows can hold even greater sway. If Stewart and Colbert and Maher are the ones installing the news in a viewer’s mind — as part of their setup before instilling their humorous slant — then they’re functioning as both messenger and comic massager: a one-stop plug-and-play for the iPod generation.
My quibble seems about as novel as the premise of this article, but here goes: Enough with the Young People, What With Their Tech-Savvy and Their Relatedly Short Attention Spans, Get Their News From The Daily Show business. You have to know the news to get the Daily Show. Was the The Press is Too Soft On Obama SNL sketch funny (if at all ) if you hadn’t been watching the press cover the candidates?
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.