The Man Behind The Daily Show's Curtain
I was watching the incredible John Oliver’s brilliant piece on Fox News on The Daily Show the other day and actively wondering — how do they find all of this footage? Oliver’s piece started off by making fun of a Fox News documentary on the Bush presidency, but ended up just making fun of Fox News as an entity — not new ground, certainly, but Oliver did a highly effective job of it.
What made the piece so effective was all the back-and-forth footage The Daily Show unearthed. At one point, the Fox News pundits were going off on how Bill Clinton’s dodging of a subpoena was anti-American, but later footage showed them totally supporting George W. Bush doing pretty much the same thing. It’s exactly the kind of thing we journalists always talk about, but can never really prove because we haven’t recorded 6,000 hours of Fox News. OK, and we don’t really feel like going through all of it.
I figured The Daily Show had 100 interns stuck in a room, endlessly going through footage while snacking on Cheetos and drinking Red Bull. Turns out, it’s mostly the work of this one guy. Thank you, Paul Farhi (Washington Post features writer I have always admired from afar) for intuiting my question and writing the piece I should have thought of and pitched to some editor somewhere and made some money on. And thank you for telling us about Adam Chodikoff, who spends his days going through Tivo recordings and transcripts of Congressional hearings and eight newspapers to come up with all the hilarity The Daily Show bestows upon us, its lucky viewers, five days a week.
There’s also a moral to this story: you can get a job that merges all your passions, and still love it and make your living at it years later. Are you taking applications, Comedy Central?
Paige commented:
Fight it out people! Love to see people take off the gloves in the comments. (Is that really you, former FCC Chairman Mark Fowler?) However, I personally don't think The Daily Show counts as the liberal media. It's fake news that offers equal opportunity mocking. Last week, Stewart questioned DNC Chairman Howard Dean as aggressively as any one actually covering the beat. Making fun of Fox News when they deserve it isn't necessarily liberal fervor, it's just good clean fun.
Daily Show Junky commented:
Fox News, Fair and Balanced, right?
Every day I am amazed how on the money the Daily Show is on so many topics. The Daily Show has even maid me, an outraged liberal, watch Fox News just to get a good laugh! Then when I am done with my laugh I get scared thinking that these people really believe their lies.
It is sad that conservatives are so ready to throw the word liberal around like they are afraid of it. Open your eyes and maybe you will see what is going on. One last thing, I love my Mac Dictionary...
conservative
adjective
1 the conservative wing of the party right-wing, reactionary, traditionalist; Republican; Brit. Tory; informal redneck.
Mark Fowler commented:
I'm delighted that Paige Albiniak so enjoys and admires satire. We who admire Fox News are also grateful, because for decades the liberal press dominated the media. It still holds sway in most major newspapers and ABC, CBS, and ABC, as well as CNN and MSNABC. So, having just a mere toehold in the electronic media,(Fox News, talk radio), seems to outrage liberals. Especially if they attract large audiences, as they have.
Take a deep breath, liberal Fox News haters: you still own most of the real estate; why be so afraid of Fox? For the first time, liberals have competition in the marketplace of ideas, and some don't like that, preferring to play their historic role as grand censors of political dialogue through the numbers of electronic media they still ocntrol.