"Fake News" shows

The article by Geoffrey Baym focused on the comedic “fake news” show, The Daily Show with John Stewart. Although the article discussed many aspects of the show and it’s relation to political journalism, one point in particular really stood out to me. In the first pages Baym gave statistics illustrating audiences of real news shows vs. audiences of comedy news shows. The figures supported the idea that more people watch shows like The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and The Late Show with David Lettermen. It then went on to discuss The Daily show in more detail. I find myself to fit in among these statistics. I am semi ashamed to say that I tune to SNL, Leno, and lettermen more then I tune into the major news stations. My reasoning was not really mentioned in the article though. I do this simply because of entertainment. Sometimes I feel as if real news shows don’t really teach me anything I don’t already know of. Either that or it’s hard to voluntarily watch something boring in the hopes that something of value might be mentioned. So I choose to watch shows I find enjoyable and slightly informative. Sure these might be “Fake News” shows, but I find the content to usually relate to important issues of the time. I have attached a link to a video of clips of Amy Poehler in SNL’s Weekend Update. Weekend Update is real “Fake News” created for comedy, though there is sometimes a bit of truth to the stories. I feel like it is a lighthearted clip that relates to this readings message. There is a link because the Embedding was disabled. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cJ2cfTEkT0