"One anchor, five correspondents, zero credibility."

You know it's not your grandmother's network news when one of the most popular information programs, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, advertises itself with such a tagline.

But Stewart is no Walter Cronkite, "real" journalists don't know whether to be happy, or horrified, that his show has more viewers in the coveted 18-to-31 age demographic than any other nightly news program in the United States.

For years now, pundits have speculated that young adults are more likely to get political news from The Daily Show, and its spinoff, The Colbert Report, rather than from network programs.

Research has shown that between 48 and 60 per cent of young adults watched fake news shows to get information about the 2004 American presidential campaign.

The good news is, mock news shows are outrageously funny.

The bad news is, they leave viewers less politically informed than those who watch real news, a new study suggests.

Researchers from Ohio State University found television viewers who watch fake news programs are less informed about issues and candidates in election campaigns than those who watch network news shows.

Young Mie Kim, co-author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State., said both news and entertainment promote some knowledge gain, "but people who are exposed to news gain more factual information and learn more about a wide range of important topics than those exposed to entertainment media.

Kim conducted the study along with former Ohio State graduate student John Vishak. Their findings are published in the Journal of Communication.

Stewart and Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, are household names thanks to their irreverent portrayals of news anchormen.

Stewart's show has won a Peabody Award, one of journalism's highest honours, for political coverage. Yet it advertises itself on its website as, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart -- it's even better than being informed."

In a study of about 85 people, Kim and Vishak found that fake news show viewers:

• Retain more information about a political candidate's personal life and less about their positions on political issues.
• Retain less information about political issues and processes compared to viewers of network news.

Mock news shows may not be the best way to learn about political candidates and issues because viewers watch the programs to be entertained, Kim said. So they may not be paying attention to all of the details.

Are comedy viewers also news consumers?

Megan Boler, a professor of media studies and philosophy of education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, disagrees and points to other studies.

A 2007 Pew Research Center study found that fans of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report rank high in surveys of public affairs knowledge, she said.

Viewers of the shows are already informed before they tune in, Boler said.

"The Daily Show is not watched to the exclusion of other sources," Boler said in an interview with CTV.ca. "In order to appreciate satire you have to have background knowledge. You're not going to have pleasure watching The Daily Show if you haven't been talking to your friends about what's going on, following other kinds of news sources."

Boler argues that Kim's study, which showed viewers 20-minute video segments from either NBC and CNN or The Daily Show about a Supreme Court nominee, fails to take into account how viewers gather news.

More people are getting their news from a variety of sources, including blogs and Internet media outlets, in an attempt to be more politically engaged, she said.

Therefore, reaction to a single news clip cannot accurately evaluate a subjects' political knowledge because it does not reflect the fact that people rarely gain that knowledge from a single source.

And the study ignores the fact that many viewers watch the programs online, which has spurred a whole online, user-generated media industry.

"Through that online watching there's a level of citizenship engagement where people can comment on it, they can link to it on their blogs, they can talk to their friends about it online, so there's an intense kind of community building," Boler said.

At the end of the day, the role of satirical news shows isn't to be a single source of information for viewers.

"Most people are aware that part of the pleasure of watching the Daily Show or Colbert is that it's making fun of news formats. It's doing that both in content and form," Boler said.

"It's doing that by pretending to be news and it's doing it by using clips from actual news and then making a joke about how straight news is doing its job. And it's urging you to ask questions about the role of media in a democracy."