Sunday, June 22, 2008

"Stoned Slackers" Know the Most





"You know the research on your show, 87% who watch it are intoxicated"
"Your audience is younger and left leaning....18-25.. the people who are on your intellectual level"- Oreilly to John Stewart

This is really old, but still just as funny as ever. Watchers of the Daily Show and Colbert report are more knowledgable about what is going on than any other news viewers according to research. This must have shocked Bill Oreilly, after he called Stewart and Colbert watchers "stoned slackers".

What makes it more interesting is that the Daily Show and Colbert don't focus on educating their audience about news stories very much like the other shows are supposed to be doing. It is assumed that the audience of the Daily Show already knows what is going on in order to understand all the jokes. Daily show lovers have received their news from elsewhere, and are just plain more informed to begin with.

Fox news channel is second to last, only worsted by morning news. How can this be? My guess is they are not only getting less information about what is actually happening, but inaccurate information. There was another piece of research that showed that Fox news viewers were more likely than any other newsers to have totally false beliefs about the events surrounding 9/11 and Iraq.

Oreilly and Limbaugh score 4th and 6th. Listening to their shows, you get a pretty good exposure to all sorts of different news stories, but you learn less and less about more and more. And if you are listening to Limbaugh, then you probably aren't at a job, and therefore have more time to gather news. Oreilly has the oldest demographic, lots of retired people who don't work and probably have plenty of time to learn the news. To be fair, maybe the stoned slackers don't work either, or are in college. But they are smarter.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, but Aaron, don't you know that "research" is an outgrowth of "science" which has a proven "Liberal" bias. You liberals are all the same.

Aaron said...

You're right. It would be liberal bias to rely upon empirical evidence to come to the research conclusion. Who is to say that Fox news viewers, for instance, don't come to deeper and more enlightened conclusions using their gut, that only *seem* false from the viewpoint of the liberal media?

Anonymous said...

I know I'm right.

Why?

Because I listen to my gut. The Liberal "viewpoint" is fact based.

Facts are a "belief system".

And America wasn't founded on a belief system, it was founded on the Bible. This is a Christian Nation, not a nation of the Liberal belief system.

Damn...

I'm beginning to believe myself.