Only News When They Wanna Be

While I have personally berated folks who only seem to get their news from “The Daily Show,” broadcast on Comedy Central, in recent years that program has proved to actually have some journalistic merit. In their election coverage and more recently when host Jon Stewart clashed with Jim Cramer regarding some misleading financial advice, it appeared that “The Daily Show” was much more serious than its comedy roots would suggest. But apparently they are only news when they wanna be.

Watching Jon Stewart softball interview Larry King last night I was struck by how Stewart seemed to at least have perused the new book King was pushing, he surely had not heard (or possibly was just ignoring) the big entertainment news regarding King and his book yesterday. When a man is your guest, how can you not know the biggest story of the day regarding that person? Unless your job is simply to push the book?

Yesterday, it was revealed that Larry in fact had a son, Larry King Jr., one he didn’t know about until years later. It’s in the book, it’s on Larry’s CNN show, it’s all over the morning news. How do you miss it, and worse yet, how does a ‘journalist’ not even mention it?

Well, maybe I was mistaken and “The Daily Show” is only a comedy show. Make the Bush and Obama jokes. Push the book. Don’t make waves. Unless of course maybe someone lost money through bad financial advice? Maybe... but then maybe Jim Kramer just didn’t have a book to push at that time...


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