3682

Which, for the entertainment value, is what makes it great. It’s like the racist sandwich portion. It almost doesn’t matter what’s said, it’s the fact that you can’t actually tell whether it is fake or real that makes the reality of Trump and Trump supporters frightening.

3683

A problem with the media, is that they love trolls. They love shocked lines. So if some politic step on a nail and say something like “oh my god, fucking christ”, then is going to be on the frontpage of every newspaper, despite any other intelligent or lame speech made that day.

Newspapers select stupid things they say and give voice to that, the more stupid a line the more views it get, politicians know and politicians are very ego-powered people, they want to see themselves in the frontpage to feel good.

3684

I don’t want to sound like I’m supporting Trump, but the fact that anyone would watch that Daily Show segment and think there is an ounce of journalistic integrity to it scares me almost as much as Trump and his supporters do.

3685

I’ve had several conversations with friends of mine who support Trump and their responses are uncannily similar to that segment. They really don’t care about anything other than the fact that he’s not bought. They don’t want status-quo.

3686

Rich and powerful people are either buyers or sellers or both – of power and influence and access in return for money. Most career politicians are necessarily sellers because they only have extreme 1% level wealth instead of absurd 0.01% wealth. The rich ones like Trump and Romney may buy more than they sell, but that doesn’t make them better; if anything being the sources of corruption instead of merely the agents, it makes them worse.

3687

Those are the saner ones. They’re single issue, but that’s not uncommon in politics.

The more frightening ones are those who say Trump get’s them. At first, you scratch your head and ask how some billionaire has anything in common with the hoi polloi Republican base. What becomes clear is that they mean they think Trump mirrors how they would act, if they were rich and powerful enough to be unfettered by societal norms and get away with it. These are people who want to do and say certain things, but don’t because they need to pay the bills and therefore play along with “political correctness”. Trump is their power fantasy.

That’s the secret to his success. The baseness of a large swath of our population.

3688

You could say the same of nearly everything on Fox, MSNBC and CNN.

And remember a LOT of people trust Fox to be giving them their news.

3689

Also, apparently the Geneva Conventions are for pussies, as per Sean Hannity arguing with Rand Paul recently.

This is the road they want to go down. Time to just nerve gas everyone Hussein-style and let God sort em out, I guess.

Sure, but if that’s your issue you have plenty of options: Sanders, Paul or Trump. Only one of them is Trump, but I guess if you’re all about starting wars with everyone and their families (literally!) he’s your man. Also he’s the only one talking about the real issues, like non-white people and how we need to get rid of them.

3690

I’ve seen the news networks get it factually incorrect more often than I’ve see the Daily Show. Hell when Fox news gets it wrong they quietly sneak in an update not on their main shows at all. What instances of is incorrect information have you found from the Daily Show?

3691

It’s a comedy show. It exists to make us laugh. Jon Stewart would be the first to tell you that he was acting as a comedian, not a journalist, when he hosted the show. They don’t even make a pretense at impartiality or objectivity. Which is not say that the show doesn’t have value outside of its comedy. It can certainly be thought provoking, but it is not journalism.

3692

I know lots of Republican’s (although more Democrats) and I don’t know a single one who would vote for Trump. I’ve heard several say they might back him in the summer but by Nov. they had all changed their mind. There is one facebook friend who might vote for him and maybe some who won’t admit.

But one of the reasons I’m suspicious of the polls, beyond the fact that President Bachman, President Herman Cain, and random nut running for President didn’t win many or generally any delegates, is that the polls have been awful predictors lately. Plus when you listen to them explain their support for Trump, for the most part they all know that what he propose isn’t serious, isn’t smart, and wouldn’t be good for the country. Donald Trump is the ultimate primal scream for pissed off blue-collar/white voters.

Voting for President is an actually a pretty serious thing, and historically American have taken it seriously.

3693

Neither is Fox, but they call themselves ‘news’. And said comedy show gets things right more than all the major cable new networks. Probably because they understand how the internet works and can fact-check things instead of reporting what they saw on Twitter and acting like that’s somehow legitimate. Or making news themselves by having a host early in the day say something stupid and then reporting that “people are saying…” Yeah, YOUR people a couple of hours ago.

The few times Daily Show screwed up, they pointed it out at the top of the show. And then followed it with the people calling them out on it screwing up over 100 times more often. Then they point out, like you did, that one of them is a comedy show and one of them is supposedly The Press.

3694

So… nothing. You can’t actually say they’ve provided false information. And as mentioned before, if there is a requirement of impartiality for news… Fox News shouldn’t exist.

3695

Hey, man, I don’t know why you keep dragging Fox News into the discussion. I did not mention them and I am not defending them. And I never said the Daily Show provided false information. I said that they lacked journalistic integrity, which involves a lot more than simply not telling any lies. Presentation matters. Objectivity matters. Intent matters.

But, hey, this is a silly thing to argue about and I apologize for maligning the Daily Show. Can we get back to making fun of Trump now? At least that most of us can agree on right?

3696

Good thing they aren’t journalists then. The relevant point being made is that supposed journalists do this shit all the time as well, so your whole point is kind of… pointless? I mean if you don’t hold actual journalists to journalistic integrity, then who cares what a comedy show does?

It’s like saying “Apples are red” when no one was really talking about apples. I mean, yeah, sure they are. And bananas are yellow, what’s your point?

And I’d say said comedy show does have more journalistic integrity than what most people call news. Fox News also doesn’t “even make a pretense at impartiality or objectivity” but they’re consider “news” somehow. The difference is one says up front “we’re a comedy show” and one says “we’re telling you facts and truths” and the comedy show is the one with more integrity pretty much across the board.

3697

Too many studies showed that Daily show watchers were some of the most informed people in America. Not journalists just better at being journalists that anyone on cable news.

3698

I think that’s the sad truth. Not that the Daily show is some pinnacle of journalistic integrity… but merely that they are better than any of the “real” sources of “news” that are really just nonsensical info-tainment.

The difference between the Daily Show and the major news networks is mainly just that the Daily Show is more funny.

And honestly, the primary thing the Daily Show does is simply point out the absurdity of the rest of the media. And the reason it’s so easy is that the rest of the news media is consistently so terrible.

3699

Correlation is not necessarily causation. It need not be the Daily Show being responsible for the level of information of its viewers.

3700

To me the Daily Show has journalistic integrity - it is what it claims to be - a fake news show on a comedy cable channel that uses satire and irony to point out the absurdity of much of what goes on in everyday life, and who pokes fun at the “real” news sources when they don’t have journalistic integrity. I feel like the fact that they do have this integrity (and that the regular news channels seem to lack integrity) is why people started looking to them for actual news reporting. You know the slant is going to be an absurd one, but they relate the facts in a (mostly) unvarnished way, and the biases the have are laid out on the table.

The problem with what we call the “mainstream” news media outlets now is that they all have their biases, yet they pretend such biases don’t exist. To me that is what undermines their integrity.

3701

Or they go so far out of their way to try and be objective that they wind up doing harmful things for the sake of balance. Like giving any oxygen to the climate change deniers, anti vaxxers, and the like. Balance and objectivity do not mean giving equal credence to batshit crazy and harmful ideas only held by a deluded minority, yet news sources, for fear of accusations of bias, often do exactly this.