I mean this question seriously:  why is it that The Daily Show, a COMEDY program, so often exposes the essence of a story so much more effectively than the mainstream media?  The standard practices of traditional television journalism are clearly outmoded and ineffective.  Are there people, either in journalism schools or in the real world, studying how the methods mainstream televised news programs might be changed so that there reporting accomplishes something more than describing the surface elements of a given story? Neither the listen-to-me-agree-with-you gabfests at Fox News or MSNBC, nor the grampa-try-to-stay-awake snoozefests at the big three networks are contributing much in the way of actual reporting these days.

Case in point:  the interview with the current Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, in The Daily Show clip below.  Rather than simply repeating each campaign’s talking points as they are in the habit of doing, might a real news organization have considered going to Wasilla and asking the current Mayor about her responsibilities and whether they would prepare her to be Vice President? Even if they had, the sympathetic editing that’s normally practiced would have softened the impact. That is to say, it would have blurred the truth.

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