What can I say? It is a VERY good night.
Bill Moyers is back, and he's bursting bubbles, loaded for bear. Who's he taking with him? The Daniel Boone of TV, Jon Stewart. (Josh Marshall is on too, but he's still just the Davy Crockett of the Internet).
A new study shows that people who watch Stewart's Daily Show are some of the best informed in the country, about as well informed as listeners of NPR, viewers of PBS. What is wrong with this picture? Or should we be asking, what is right?!
Damn, Bill, I can't say how much I've missed you. I missed the opening salvo, on the media's travesty of Iraq war coverage (pathetic coverage I participated in, and was complicit in, to my eternal shame, even though there was nothing I could do about it). I did get to watch the video online, and I listened to the podcast 2 times thru, at work. I needed to make sure I put this stuff in conscious memory, not just the regular news memory I've carried for the last five years.
You can bet I will be tuning in on Bill Moyers's Journal every Friday night, and running the repeats on podcast.
Link: Bill Moyers Journal . Profile . Jon Stewart | PBS.


Link: Pew Survey Finds Most Knowledgeable Americans Watch 'Daily Show' and 'Colbert'-- and Visit Newspaper Sites.
[...]
Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot -- with 54% of them getting 2 out of 3 questions correct. Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS followed just behind.
Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly. Fox topped only network morning show viewers.
Told that Shia was one group of Muslims struggling in Iraq, only 32% of the total sample could name "Sunni" as the other key group.[...]
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