TV: I'm Ted Koppel, and this.................................. is Nightline

A nagging question about last week's Democratic Convention coverage by The Daily Show was just cleared up for me on Dana Steven's Surfergirl TV blog (which I have under my links, yet I had to be made aware of the post by a link on Mark Evanier's blog... the blog world, it's all so incestuous, isn't it? Oh, man, I dread the Google searches that word is gonna net me. I've already gotten a hit from "women+and+dog+fantasies". Why, I don't know. But I digress).

My nagging question was, why didn't Ted Koppel show up for a scheduled interview on Thursday's Daily Show? Stewart didn't even mention Koppel's absence, which I thought was weird. Dana Stevens appears to have the answer: on Wednesday, Koppel spoke to Stewart on Nightline. And it appears Koppel does not much care for Stewart or The Daily Show. I wish I had seen that segment; it sounds like Koppel went off on Stewart, although it also sounds like Stewart held his own, and perhaps was even more gracious than Koppel deserved.

That's a shame, because I have a tremendous respect for Koppel, but he really doesn't get it. People aren't watching The Daily Show as a news source, as he accused Stewart, they're watching it (or at least I am) to get an alternate spin on the news. Stewart's coverage of the coverage of Al Sharpton's speech at the convention is a good example. Several media outlets treated the speech dismissively, writing Sharpton off as little more than a crank, with nothing of significance to say, with Chris Matthews for one actually interrupting the coverage of the speech because he felt it lacked importance. Stewart and The Daily Show, meanwhile, showed an impassioned Sharpton enthralling and galvanizing the convention with his words.

Is The Daily Show's take more reliable? Not necessarily -- but it is a different take, a take that can see past the old conventional wisdom of Sharpton as no more than a jogging suit-clad loudmouth, a take not bound by network sensibilities or political filtering. Even if you don't like Stewart's take (and certainly he -- and the show -- are more biased toward the left than not), you have to admit he often presents a candid, bullshit-free side to the news which other, "real" news outlets should be ashamed for neglecting.