The Daily Show: Important Primaries

The week of March 10th, 2008 wasn't a huge week for coverage of the 2008 presidential election, although there was coverage of the Wyoming primary and the Mississippi primary briefly.



The Daily Show took a humorous approach to the Wyoming primary by having Sam Bee analyze the 'race' break down of the voters. Instead of using the typical breakdown (Black, White, Latino, etc) they used titles such as 'Rugged Outdoorsmen', 'Grizzled Old Coots', and 'Ornery Drifters' among others. Esentially The Daily Show was satirizing the media's frame that sometimes implies that certain candidates win using certain demographics only. More specifically I think they were using the fact that Wyoming is a mainly white, blue collar area, which is supposed to be Hillary's stronger demographic.

This episode was one of the first that I've seen with a woman being a integral part of the show, although Sam Bee was the only woman on the show.




On March 12th, 2008 Jon Stewart looked at the media's framing of the Mississippi primary. He showed clips from at least 5 different mainstream news shows that all had the anchor saying that the results of the Mississippi primary (Obama won by a lot) was no surprise. Stewart asks the question, "So that means it doesn't count?" Stewart then shows the delegate count:
Obama: 1598
Clinton: 1487
Differece: 111
and questions the media's frame that the election seems to be out of reach for Hillary. Again there on no women in this show. It is interesting to note that although March 13th, 2008 doesn't directly talk about the 2008 presidential election, there is a woman intereviewed and a special segement by a woman.

The Daily Show: Trendspotting Youthquake

Finally The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is back after the writers strike! February 28th, 2008 featured news on Bush's trip to Africa, a section on the upcoming election and the importance of the youth vote, as well as an interview with Brian Williams from NBC Nightly News who hosted the recent Presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Stewart's show is a hybrid between a comic show and an actual nightly news show, so it is a fun way to get the daily news.

The portion titled Trendspotting-Youthquake is a comedic look at the importance of the youth vote in the upcoming election and the people in the mainstream media who follow the trends among youth voters. Demetri Martin assembles a 'street team' to find out whats on the minds of this year's all important youth vote. The 'street team' consists of the five men and one woman who make up Jon Stewart's news team. The clip shows them interviewing young men and women in bars using 'youth language'. This segment pokes fun of the people who interview youth voters because it shows the interviewers as being rather stupid and trying to use 'street slang' to better relate to the youth. The men and women in the bar are clearly a bit offended. This segment also interviews a reporter from CBS News, Itay Hod, who has a video blog that focus on the youth voters.

This segment doesn't have a frame for the youth voters, but is merely poking fun at how youth are treated as a demographic. I thought the piece might at least mention the frame that Obama has all the youth voters, but that wasn't mentioned at all, and when the candidates names were mentioned they were both mentioned equally.

Although this isn't different from the general trend on the Jon Stewart show, there were only two women in the whole segement; one of the street team, Sam Bee, and the other was a young woman in a bar who was interviewed.

The interview with Brian Williams was interesting because he is clearly not allowed to voice an opinion on politics, but Jon Stewart asked about Hillary Clinton's recent observation that she always gets asked the question first in the debates, and it was interesting because Williams said that in general it had to do with the fact that she was getting more press and news.

Overall an interesting show!