Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Its's not that difficult, folks

So Atrios points out that some news people are somewhat miffed that Kerry has chosen The Daily Show for an extended interview tonight. He won the TV Critics Association's award as the year's best news and information program, which WP critic Lisa de Moraes reported this way: "We think Stewart was given the TCA Award because his Comedy Central show was the only one early on to ask the tough questions about the decision to invade Iraq . . . Stewart was somewhat baffled by the award -- his show won a TCA award last year for best comedy program. In his taped acceptance speech, he pointed out that his newscast is "fake," "illegitimate" and "unprofessional." Stewart insisted it must be some sort of mistake and said that if his show had an actual fact-checking apparatus, like an real news program, they would check it out."
Actually, its not that difficult to run a professional TV news program -- just be knowledgeable about the background material, anticipate what your guests are likely to say, and be ready to challenge them if need be. Stewart actually does this with just about every guest he had on, even the softball TV-star/movie-star/author-of-the-week interviews. And his gang of "special correspondents" do it too.
And they demand truth, even when their stories are about gay penguins. Thus they invariably pinpoint any stupidities, inconsistencies, evasions and lies which they find in the news stories of the day. Just how hard it is to do that, these days?

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