Get Herald RSSI had a moment of clarity last August. I was in the gym, watching my number one source of nightly news, the satirical "Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Rob Riggle, one of the correspondents and a former Marine, was reporting live from Iraq about the Iraqi parliament's lengthy vacation. The segment showed messages from American soldiers to Parliament members such as "You guys enjoy your vacation - we'll keep fighting for your country for you" and "Take the time off, I'm sure it's well deserved. Go home and see your family. I bet you only get to see them three or four times a week."
It was hilarious and it was heartbreaking. Meanwhile, someone else in the gym was watching CNN on the other TV. The reporters were doing a shocking exposé on a fly that had landed on Chris Dodd's head during the Democratic debate. Ah, I thought. So that's what it looks like when a television network abdicates its responsibilities.
Maybe my view of the goode olde dayes before the twenty-four hour news cycle is dominated by nostalgic visions of families gathering 'round the television to watch Edward Murrow bring down Joseph McCarthy. But it's hard to imagine that kind of straight-shooting journalistic integrity when you see the bloviating blowhards going in full force every time you turn on the TV, each desperately spinning and warping and cramming that day's news into their predefined ideological niche. But tune in to Comedy Central between 11 p.m. and 12 p.m., and you might even get more info- than -tainment.
As a fake source for real news, The Daily Show has it all: the "resident expert" whose area of expertise changes depending on the day's headlines, the flashy graphics designed to impress toddlers with ADD, the token minority correspondents and the hard-hitting investigations with the overdramatic titles. (My personal favorite is "Bathtub Cheese: Culture of Death.") His counterpart, Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report adopts the role of windbag pundit, blinding viewers with flags, plugging his various personal enterprises and opening his interviews with, "President Bush: great president, or the greatest president?"
I would say that it would be funny if it weren't so tragic. Only it is funny - extremely so. However, it would not be funny if it weren't so spot-on, and as much as the best fake news anchors in television ridicule the nation's politicians, they also spend significant time reminding us of the foibles - or let's be honest, the idiocy - of the television news media, particularly the so-called punditocracy.
You could call them talking heads, but shouting heads is probably more appropriate. Bill Kovach, the former New York Times Washington bureau chief and the founder of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, dubbed them "a group of loosely credentialed, self-interested performers whose primary job is remaining on TV." And when you think about it, why should anyone listen to Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews, Ann Coulter or Bill Maher? Do these people have any sort of education or experience that prepares them to opine on half the subjects they cover? No; I doubt anybody does. But infotainment is in high demand these days, and as long as these shows are ratings draws, no amount of controversy, misinformation or just plain stupidity will take them off the air.
The Daily Show used to run a segment called "Great Moments in Punditry," where small children would read aloud transcripts from talking head shows. Somehow, seeing five-year-olds attack each other and call each other names brought home just how infantile these shows can be. I haven't seen feuds like this since middle school.
For instance, Keith Olbermann routinely called Bill O'Reilly "the worst person in the world" and implied that he is a Nazi; in response, a Fox News spokeswoman issued a statement saying, "Because of his personal demons, Keith has imploded everywhere he's worked ... it's obvious Keith is a train wreck waiting to happen. And like all train wrecks, people might tune in out of morbid curiosity, but they eventually tune out, as evidenced by Keith's recent ratings decline. In the meantime, we hope he enjoys his paranoid view from the bottom of the ratings ladder and wish him well on his inevitable trip to oblivion."
Is this really what we want defining our national discourse, or are these people, as Jon Stewart so aptly put it, "hurting America" even as they pretend to defend it?
So come join the ranks of the well-informed, well-educated Daily Show viewers. (Though O'Reilly called us "stoned slackers," we are 78 percent more likely than the average adult to have four or more years of higher education, and are more knowledgeable about current events than those who read newspapers or watch the nightly news.) Hopefully sooner rather than later, the poison on which the pundits all thrive will be sucked out of the news cycle. If that means the pundits lose their jobs, then that's no great loss.
Sarah Rosenthal '11 has neither the education nor experience to opine on this subject
is a member of the 
