Fakers (or) How Stewart and Colbert Saved News and Conquered the World

The man in wire-frame glasses triumphantly ran on stage to thundering applause and Cheap Trick’s “I Want you to Want Me” blasting in the background. After acknowledging the audience—and himself—with hops and fist pumps and victorious smiles, this titan of news somehow calmed the crowd, and his speech went on.

“You people know I’m not real, right?”

The two sellout crowds at Cornell University that night didn’t care. Their roars were deafening. They willfully suspended their disbelief. To this group of young people, the man on stage—Stephen Colbert—is an entertainer who’s saving news, as is his good friend, Jon Stewart.

And some might argue it’s an industry desperately in need of saving. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, nightly news audience numbers have been falling for more than 20 years, leaving a demographic averaging around 60 years old. Another study suggests cable news has turned into a battleground between the likes of CNN and Fox News, with little room for competition. Clearly, the business of broadcast is in flux.

But don’t tell that to the people at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Stewart’s show—a “fake” news broadcast mocking the news and the news business—has been a ratings bonanza for parent network Comedy Central. Ditto for Colbert’s caricature of Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly. These men gleefully expose the hypocrisy of newsmakers and reporters, and people are watching.

One of those people, Syracuse University Associate Professor Hub Brown, told the American Journalism Review he now believes in the value of Comedy Central’s news block.

"There are days when I watch 'The Daily Show,'” Brown said, “and I kind of chuckle. There are days when I laugh out loud. There are days when I stand up and point to the TV and say, 'You're damn right!'"

But something funny happened on the way to the punch line for these fake news heroes: they went legit. At least to some, the Comedy Central news block has become a bastion of honesty in a news business flooded with spin. Former U.S. Presidents have appeared on The Daily Show, as have current presidents from Pakistan and Bolivia. Congressmen, cabinet members and generals are regulars on both programs, as are network anchors and Hollywood’s elite.

Audiences are also seeing truth in the comedy of these shows. According to at least one study from Indiana University, the actual amount of straight news content in The Daily Show during the run-up to the 2004 election was the same as that of traditional broadcast news programs.

"Our findings should allay at least some of the concerns about the growing reliance on this non-traditional source of political information,” author Julia Fox said, “as it is just as substantive as the source that Americans have relied upon for decades.”

In commenting about her findings, Fox also notes that at the end of the day, this is still an infotainment society, and that the substance in both isn’t enough, in her opinion. But it doesn’t appear that young people are going strictly to Comedy Central to get their news. Stewart said in a Washington Post article that it would be impossible for a viewer to participate fully in his show without understanding the news on which his jokes are based.

"We are not newsmen, but it's jokes about real news,” Stewart said. “We don't make anything up, other than the fact we're not actually standing in Baghdad. . . . The appeal of doing the show is that it's cathartic."

Stewart’s not alone in his assumptions, either. CNN reported a study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that viewers of The Daily Show are more knowledgeable about current events than those who don’t watch late-night TV. But that’s not all:

“On top of that, ‘Daily Show’ viewers know more about election issues than people who regularly read newspapers or watch television news, according to the National Annenberg Election Survey.” In addition, “‘Daily Show’ viewers are 78 percent more likely than the average adult to have four or more years of college education…”

While Stewart seems to be an equal-opportunity satirist, he has taken stances against what he sees as a media afraid to ask the right questions and take its government to task. His appearance on CNN’s Crossfire in which he lambasted the program and others like it for playing into the hands of politicians instead of furthering political discourse is now infamous in Internet and media circles.

Only months later, web site arstechnica.com reported CNN President Jonathan Klein canceled the show and fired pundit Tucker Carlson. While Stewart’s appearance was not likely the only factor in the decision, according to Bill Carter of the The New York Times, his words were used by Klein as part of the reason for Crossfire’s cancellation.

“Mr. Klein said last night, ‘I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart's overall premise.’ He said he believed that especially after the terror attacks on 9/11, viewers are interested in information, not opinion.”

Despite their apparent pull in the realms of both news and politics, Stewart and Colbert largely agree that their place in the world is only that of comedians, and because of that, they can be more forthright about their beliefs.

“What people in Washington don't understand is that we're not running for re-election,” Stewart told Rolling Stone. “We don't have to parse every word for fear that it appears in our opponent's commercial and suddenly renders us impotent.

“They believe everything has consequence in real-world terms,” he added. “And what we as comedians understand is, you bomb one night, you go on the next night and you do a little better.”

Colbert also chimed in, “We claim no respectability. There's no status I would not surrender for a joke. So we don't have to defend anything.”

As much as Stewart and Colbert are comedians first, they have also drawn the unfortunate task of defending the importance of government and the fourth estate to the younger half of America (only 17 percent of Stewart’s audience is over 50). But with biting spitball satire as their weapon, the venerable comics just might yet save the republic for the country’s young adults.