Re: Is the Daily Show real journalism?

On Feb 6, 11:34 am, Towse <s...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/05/DDGF7NU0V...>

Today the Chronicle profiles Venise Wagner, an assistant professor and
associate chair of the journalism department at SFSU, who teaches a
demanding public journalism class. She teaches other classes as well,
but the focus of the article is on the public journalism/community
reporting class.

End of the article, this:

"Every semester, in my Mass Media class, we get into an argument about
whether 'The Daily Show' is real journalism. The students insist that
it's journalism. I argue that it's satire. They don't do their own
reporting -- it's entertainment wrapped around news.

"I tell my students, "You may be learning something and you may be
having fun while you're learning it, but you're not getting news.'"

And there she lost me. The Daily Show may not be real journalism, but

Your first mistake was reading the Chronicle <g>

the viewers =are= getting news,

Best news on television.

If your news source aggregates the news it presents from other sources,
does that make it any less a source of news?

A lot of what you read in many newspapers comes directly from the
wire. At least with the Daily Show there's value added to the
aggregation. Insight into the political process, that sort of thing.

Susan

.