Unconventional Sources of News = News

When comedian John Stewart is confronted about the fact that The Daily Show has political clout, he often shrugs the allegations off, pointing out that his show is on Comedy Central. His argument is that because his show comes after "puppets making crank phone calls," he can't be held accountable for what goes on during his segment. In this way he's able to evade criticism about what he says on his show.
Personally, however, I don't think that this is an excuse. It's true that John Stewart is not an official news source, and it's true that the show is touted by its producers as a comedy show. However, this doesn't change the fact that when it comes down to it, people are still not only getting their cues about what’s important in the world from the daily show, but are also formulating their opinions about these issues from his show. As we saw from the New York Times article that we read for class, John Stewart has political power, and people listen to what he says.
Therefore, I don’t think Stewart should shirk his responsibilities. While it’s true that he certainly is not a conventional news show and thus is not a conventional news source, that doesn’t take away from what viewers are taking away from his show. No matter what absurd show precedes him, John Stewart is an important voice in the political world, in the same way CNN would still be important even if it came after Sesame Street.

I know this is nothing anybody hasn't heard before, but I find the double-standardness (should be a word) that exists in American politics in relation to Israel blatant. Israel is condemned for increasing its attacks against militants who have started targeting civilian school buses containing children. Israel has been bombarded by rockets and terrorist attacks for years, and yet when they strike back against militant targets they are met with condemnation.
It's interesting to note that when the massive American air force launches air strikes directly at the heart of a country on a different continent that hasn't been attacking us or even sponsoring terrorism against us for at least a decade, there is little criticism of the type Israel receives. In other words, there is criticism that maybe America shouldn't be wasting its resources in Libya, or complaints that there are other countries in the region that deserve more attention. You don't, however, hear people complaining that America doesn't have the right to protect itself, and should be thinking about how many civilians its going to kill by bombing the heck out of Qaddafi. The same people who criticize Israel for directly retaliating remain silent when America bombs a country that is not even a threat to its security.
The title about the Israeli air strikes in the New York Times reads as follows:

5 More Palestinians Killed as Israelis Retaliate for School Bus Attack (By FARES AKRAM and ETHAN BRONNER Published: April 8, 2011) 

The article about American air strikes against Libya reads: 

Allies Open Air Assault on Qaddafi’s Forces in Libya (By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, STEVEN ERLANGER and ELISABETH BUMILLER Published: March 19, 2011). 

The article about Israel makes the reader feel more for the bombed, whereas the one about the American attacks focuses solely on the attacker. Two countries attacking another country, represented in a different manner to reflect the biases of the author. 

Liberals are retarded

We mentioned in class that because of blogging and increasingly biased media outlets, Americans are becoming more and more polarized in their political ideologies. In other words, people are alienating the other side and are becoming convinced not just that they are a hundred percent right, but that members of the other side are actually fundamentally flawed in some way for not agreeing with their own particular point of view.

As an example of this, I went on YouTube and typed in “Liberals are” and saw what YouTube suggested I end the statement with. Then I did the same thing for “Conservatives are.” Some of the results I got for both were, “retarded, stupid, destroying America, idiots, morons, anti-American, evil, dumb, racist, annoying, wrong, and ignorant.” In other words, rather than understanding that there are simply different legitimate approaches to running a liberal democracy like the US, many Americans need to convince themselves that the other side is wrong at its core rather than admit that there could be some legitimacy to the other side, because it’s a much simpler, easier way of thinking. It sets up the world in black and white.

This aspect of human nature isn’t so scary when you look at its effects within America, because in many ways the differences in lifestyle are still minimal, and thus the animosity usually doesn’t lead to extreme violence. This human tendency to polarize around an ideology and then demonize the other side plays a much more important role on the global scale. In order for a Muslim radical terrorist to perform a violent act of terrorism on innocent civilians who are not involved in politics, the terrorist needs to be fully convinced that the people he is killing are not only flawed in their ideologies, but are evil. If Pakistani terrorists would say, “We believe that the province of Kashmir should belong to Pakistan, but we understand that the Indian govt. feels that it is their territory as well,” the horrific Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 would likely not have occurred. When you admit the other side has some legitimacy, you are admitting that you might be wrong in some respects, and this is difficult for people to acknowledge.

The biggest danger is simply that people find it easier to believe that they are 100% right and everyone else is 100% wrong. American news outlets need to start combining liberal and conservative doctrines, just to show citizens that there can be two legitimate sides to the same coin. If we can’t even accept fellow Americans with slightly different ideologies, how can we expect our enemies to ever accept our existence and for the world to ever live in peace?