When Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly appeared on The Daily Show in 2004, he criticized Jon Stewart’s faux-news show and the many students who regularly watch it with a widely held misconception.

“You’ve got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night,” O’Reilly said.

Perhaps they are stoned, but according to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, regular viewers of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report are among the most knowledgeable on current affairs.

Fans of Comedy Central’s “fake news programs'” tied in the poll with readers of major newspaper websites as the most well-versed on issues of national matters, the April report said.

The survey’s participants were tested on their abilities to identify political figures such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom only half of all those polled could identify, and on their responses to quizzes about recent headline news stories.

The survey relied on phone interviews of 1,502 adults from across the country, asking them which news sources they watch or read regularly. The results did not include which other news sources the survey’s subjects most often consult.

The show’s followers, such as freshman Steve O’Brien, say the finding is not unexpected.

“They always said it was a ‘fake news show,’ but they’re reporting the facts,” said O’Brien, a computer science major.

Many students say the comedy news programs are often their main source for news. In fact, a 2004 Pew Research Center study found that 21 percent of people aged 18 to 29 regularly learned about presidential campaign news from The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live.

“I watch The Daily Show for comedy, entertainment and to learn some political information,” said Stephen Blaney, a sophomore letters and sciences major. “I will, rarely, stop on CNN, but that’s just before getting to another channel.”

Karlo Marcelo, a research associate at the university’s Center for Information and Research of Civic Learning and Engagement, says college students are often less knowledgeable on news than adults, but they “really know about the kinds of things that are affecting them,” such as the Iraq War and student budget referendums.

Regular viewers of the comedy news shows may know more about current events “because young people have more time to get the news, and then leisurely watch The Daily Show afterward,” Marcelo said. “The Daily Show requires people know the news before they watch. It’s not like the Jay Leno show where he makes references to things in popular culture that anyone can pick up on.”

The report said viewers of the Fox News channel and local TV news were tied in second-to-last in current events knowledge, with viewers of network morning shows ranked as the least-informed viewers.

A 2003 university study found viewers of Fox News were 30 percent more likely than viewers of network news programs to hold misperceptions about the reasons for why the United States initiated the Iraq War. While Fox News doesn’t explicitly lie to viewers, some ambiguous reports can be interpreted incorrectly, said Steven Kull, the study’s author.

“It’s rare that Fox News actually makes a false statement,” said Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes in the School of Public Policy. “It’s done by implication.”

Although students who watch The Daily Show may be well-informed, some studies suggest the show has led them to lose faith in politics.

A study last year at East Carolina University measured the responses of students who watched traditional news coverage of the 2004 presidential election and then satirical video clips from The Daily Show. Students reacted more negatively toward both candidates after watching Stewart’s cynical commentary, possibly deterring young people from voting, the study said.

Sue Kopen Katcef, the executive producer for Maryland Newsline and a lecturer at the university’s journalism college, said viewers should realize that his program is comedy first and news second.

“I think you have to understand [Daily Show writers’] tongues are firmly planted in their cheeks,” said Kopen Katcef, who watches Stewart occasionally. “It’s their take on real-life situations. But they’re going to test, to the nth degree, the absurdity of a lot of that which those of us in the more traditional media cover.”

But Stewart said in an October interview with Rolling Stone that if his viewers are losing faith in government, it’s the fault of the politicians who he is exposing through their own hypocrisy.

“There’s nothing at all disingenuous about what we’re doing,” Stewart said. “If anything is cynical, it’s suggesting that your policy has never been ‘stay the course’ when we have thousands of hours of tape showing you using ‘stay the course.'”

Contact reporter Mark Millian at newsdesk@dbk.umd.edu.