FACE THE
NATION
Madeleine Smithberg: It wasn’t really until Brian came
from CBS News that we realized what an opportunity
we had as a fake news show. There wasn’t enough news
to fill all the outlets on television, so the people who
were reporting the news made it about themselves, and
that was our in. We weren’t making fun of the stories in
the news—we were making fun of the way people were
reporting those stories.
Brian Unger: The genesis of The Daily Show was rooted
in real reporters who came from these respected worlds
of writing and reporting, and who brought their rage
and anger at the system. I’m not sure the show has the
same gravitas now [since it relies more on comedians for
its correspondents].
Lizz Winstead: On our first show, [Kilborn] interviewed
a woman whose cat was killed by a BB gun, who then
channeled the cat through a psychic and wrote a eulogy
for her based on what the cat had said from the grave.
We knew from that point on that we were never going
to stop laughing.
Unger: Frank Rich [of The New York Times] sent me a
handwritten note saying, “Thank you for what you’re
doing, keep doing it.” And I thought, “What are we
doing?” The show really, at its spine, is about journalists
abdicating their responsibility as journalists. There are
some journalists who are really trying to do their job, but
their bosses are just looking for ratings and profit. Now
it’s gotten so complex with the digital universe, but we
were at a time of great innocence. We were trying to
satirize news and the structure and the form of it.