Politifact Attacks Jon Stewart

June 23, 2011

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Sorry PolitiFact, this may be news to you, but The Daily Show is not a real news show. Earlier in the week there was discussion over Jon Stewart’s comments in an interview on Fox News in which he stated that Fox News viewers constantly poll at the bottom in being the most misinformed. Then PolitiFact came out the next day giving Stewart’s comments a false rating on their truth scale. They found the polls Stewart was referencing and Fox News was not at the bottom, only near the bottom with almost all their programming. In fact PolitiFact stated that even Stewart’s own Daily Show ranked below the Fox programming.

The only thing is, PolitiFact, you forgot one thing, The Daily Show is a comedy show about media, not a news show. It’s kind of akin to Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live, not Fox and Friends or Bill O’Reilly and his spin filled zone. It is kind of like someone trying to compare amateur wrestling to professional wrestling on their value as sports. One is an actual sport and the other is sports entertainment.

It is kind of the same thing Wallace fell into in the interview itself when he started taking out old tape of clips from Comedy Central Shows. Now it would have been funny if Wallace was trying to fight back on the argument that Fox is not News with a Comedy Central is not really Comedy a lot of the time, but that is not what he was trying to do. Wallace was trying to use other Comedy Central clips to discredit Stewart because his network plays this filth.

The outcome of the whole thing is that Fox News viewers are some of the most uninformed or misinformed individuals. Now PolitiFact may decide to say it was false that they are the worst, but they did come out and prove that they ARE constantly near the bottom with almost all their programming.

This leads me to my main point in bringing this up. Why do Fox News viewers, or viewers of any network, trust everything they are hearing on the news as fact. A sane and logical individual (both stretches for the typical Fox Viewer but I digress) would hear something on the news and then go research it more to find out what it is all about. They would not just blindly believe very statement or party line agenda in the case of Fox being fed to them. However the truth is that this is what the typical Fox viewer actually wants.

They think the media is all liberal since it is not 100% in step with their views so they need someone to tell them what the news is and make it where it fits into their own delusional world where they are right 100% of the time and they don’t actually have to worry about things like the truth or facts.

Now I am not saying everything said on news I watch is true all the time, but I know to go look something up for further investigation and news shows and commentators I generally watch also come back and do old school newspaper corrections when proven wrong. That is something Fox (and their viewers for that matter) rarely would ever do, admit that they are wrong.

2 Comments (+add yours?)

  1. Martin Kelly
    Jun 28, 2011 @ 09:41:31

    Angry, you are so right. The only question I have is about the corrections. I do not think I have heard anyone admit mistakes since we were blessed with three 24 hour news stations. Back in the day, there was careful attention to detail. Now it seems that the stations are viaing to be the first to air a story, and make fools of themselves.

    Polls about being informed/misinformed are of course biased towards what “informed” means. I have participated in many polls that do not have any selection I agree with. I can quickly tell wether the pollster is Left, Right, or intellegent.

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  2. The Angry Squirrel
    Jun 28, 2011 @ 10:03:25

    Well on the corrections part I was meaning that the political commentators I do watch will come back and take time to correct a misinformation. It is something I have never seen a Fox person do. They only apologize when they ask a ‘truthful’ question like Are you a flake? Which if you believe the US Census exists only to gather data to put conservatives in prison camps amongst endless other absurd statements, then no matter how educated you may be you pretty much are a flake.

    Now as far as Politifact goes if they actually rated all statements it would be of more value. Afterall Michelle Bachman has never made a true statement? That is unlikely. She did say she is from Waterloo, so there is something that is truthful.

    On opinion polls yeah they do not always lead to there being the answer that actaully fits and I too can usually tell by the company behind the survey how credible it is going to be.

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