Yesterday, Richard Morin of the Washington Post had this little piece entitled “Jon Stewart, Enemy of Democracy?”. The article was a pretty negative attack towards the impact of The Daily Show:
This is not funny: Jon Stewart and his hit Comedy Central cable show may be poisoning democracy.
Two political scientists found that young people who watch Stewart’s faux news program, “The Daily Show,” develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting.
That’s particularly dismaying news because the show is hugely popular among college students, many of whom already don’t bother to cast ballots.
Jody Baumgartner and Jonathan S. Morris of East Carolina University said previous research found that nearly half — 48 percent — of this age group watched “The Daily Show” and only 23 percent of show viewers followed “hard news” programs closely.
To test for a “Daily Effect,” Baumgartner and Morris showed video clips of coverage of the 2004 presidential candidates to one group of college students and campaign coverage from “The CBS Evening News” to another group. Then they measured the students’ attitudes toward politics, President Bush and the Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.).
The results showed that the participants rated both candidates more negatively after watching Stewart’s program. Participants also expressed less trust in the electoral system and more cynical views of the news media, according to the researchers’ article, in the latest issue of American Politics Research.
“Ultimately, negative perceptions of candidates could have participation implications by keeping more youth from the polls,” they wrote.
Now I have a problem with this. First off, there has been other studies done and they have concluded that viewers of the Daily Show are more informed than their peers who watch other shows:
In a recent survey, viewers of Stewart’s “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central tested better than Letterman and Leno viewers on a six-question politics quiz. (How do you stack up? Take the quiz and compare your score.)
Viewers of all three shows know more about the background of presidential candidates and their positions on issues than people who don’t watch late-night TV.
There has also been polling done that shows people who watch Jon Stewart are generally more informed on current issues than viewers of FOX news.
It also trotted out stats from Nielsen Media Research to show that Stewart’s viewers are not only smart, but more educated than O’Reilly’s.
“Daily Show” viewers are 78 percent more likely than the average adult to have four or more years of college education, while O’Reilly’s audience is only 24 percent more likely to have that much schooling.
I guess that Mr. Morin doesn’t like it when falafel Bill takes a hit.
Well I decided to get away from these polls and use my mind, which is influenced by Jon Stewart nightly, to investigate. I went to the U.S. Census Bureaus’ website and started compiling data on voter turnout. I broke this down between congressional election years and presidential election years. Further I broke it down into two groups; those 18-24 years old and those 25 and up. I figured this would give us the most fair view and here is what I found:
The Daily Show premiered in 1996 and the areas in the darker gray on these chart depict that. Starting with the top chart, which highlights the congressional years, there was a slight increase (0.6%) in voter turnout for the age group of 18-24 between 1998 and 2002. What is even more interesting is the decrease between 1994 – 1998, a 3.5% downward slide. Now half of the years in there can be attributed to the Daily Show, but not Jon Stewart. Stewart did not start hosting the show until 1999. Prior to him Craig Kilborn was the host.
The Presidential elections are the most interesting. There was only a minimal decrease between 1996 and 2000 (0.1%) but the increase from the 2000 to the 2004 election, 9.6%, is astonishing. It looks like more college age students turned out to vote during the first full cycle that Jon Stewart was actually on the air. Also notice the sharp decrease from 1992-1996, 10.4%. This is prior to the airing of The Daily Show.
What these simple charts tell me is that we are getting more young people out to vote. Now we have no way of knowing if that can be directly attributed to the Daily Show, but considering the original report said that 48% of the people in this age group do watch it, I would have to say Jon Stewart has actually helped our Democracy. The enemies of Democracy are people who sit there and twist and distort the facts like Mr. Morin did in his article yesterday.