Krmahoney247's Blog

via Philly.com with additional information from here.

As someone who doesn’t watch a lot of traditional television news, I was very pleased to hear that I might not have been completely rotting my brain by watching Comedy Central’s fake news program The Daily Show.  On more than one occasion, the show has broken news stories that other networks didn’t cover.

The most recent story comes from Fox News’ use of incorrect footage that made it seem like the tea-party protests of November 5th had a significantly larger turnout than they actually did.  As seen in the video above, Sean Hannity and various other commentators claim that the protest had an audience of 30,000 to 40,000 people, while the Washington Post reported only ten thousand.  The show spliced footage September’s much larger tea-party protest in with the footage of the November 5th rally, making it appear as if there more attendees than there actually were.

So what makes this such a big deal?  Well, Fox News, an outlet not exactly known for their “fair and balanced” reporting outright lied to it’s viewers, and it took a comedian from a satirical news showon a cable network to point it out.

This is not the first time that Stewart and The Daily Show have cast light on a news network that was in the wrong.  Back in March, the show had an “epic 8-minute takedown” of CNBC’s bogus financial reporting.

So what does this teach us?  Well, it teaches us that news can come from everywhere, even though these outlets may be less than traditional.  Sure The Daily Show airs at 11pm on the same network that airs South Park, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have their moments.  Hell, I could go on forever about the brilliant social commentary on South Park, but I think I’ll save that for later.  For now, stop feeling guilty about laughing it up with Jon Stewart, and don’t believe everything you hear from “traditional” news.