Personally, I don't think it's necessarily that the Daily Show is a news show. But what they do, and do it extraordiarily well, is that they point out the hypocracy or the glaring parts of a story that the nightly news doesn't cover.



>I'll be damned...
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>"The Daily Show is much funnier than traditional newscasts, but a new study from Indiana University says it has the same amount of meat on its bones when it comes to coverage of the news. The brand of news coverage Jon Stewart and the rest of The Daily Show's staff brings to the airwaves is just as substantive as traditional news programs like World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News, according to the study conducted by IU assistant professor of telecommunications Julia R. Fox and a couple of graduate students."
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>http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061004-7908.html