(this is annie)

"A lot of television viewers—more, quite frankly, than I am comfortable with—get their news from [...] The Daily Show." —Ted Koppel, July 04

Lately, the old-guard journalism fellows are sweating through their gabardine. Turns out that my generation is distrustful of the news media, and would rather watch The Daily Show than Nightline.

Should this really surprise anyone?

I watch Nightline more often than I catch The Daily Show, mostly because I don't get cable. But if it were possible to watch TDS instead, I'd do it in a heartbeat—and not just because Jon Stewart is a sexy, sexy Jewish man. It's because news media outlets are largely owned by corporations; they are influenced heavily by talking points rather than by their own ideas; they follow each other around to earn ratings, not to report stories; and finally, they are so scared of looking biased that they report allegations rather than facts (see: Swift Boat Vets fiasco).

Look, I don't care about the BAT INVASION!!! in one Peoria woman's house (that hard-hitter aired at 10:07 on a local ABC affiliate this month). I don't care about a scientist who put little weights on a beetle to test its strength (that's from a national network broadcast this week). I am sorry that Laci Peterson was killed, but I do not think that her story merits national attention of this magnitude.

I think a lot of people my age believe the same thing. When people like Ted Koppel (I do a great impersonation, by the way) talk down to my generation, implying that we're not bright enough to differentiate "real" news from "fake" news, it's insulting. Of course we can tell the difference, and we can also tell when the "real" news isn't giving us the whole story. We are tired of news without nuance, without balance, and sometimes without fact.

I like Ted Koppel, and as part of Operation: FTAS I do my little exercises while watching Nightline. For the most part, it's a good program. I think ol' Teddy fights the good fight. But what he doesn't see is that many intelligent viewers have grown disenchanted with the lazy fare (arr arr) that dominates television news. We get our news elsewhere and then watch The Daily Show for a laugh. What's so bad about that?