During their coverage of Monday’s Washington Navy Yard shootings a good portion of America’s national cable news organizations clearly demonstrated just how far out of touch they are with what they’re supposed to be doing, at least if “reporting the news” or “practicing journalism” are what they think they’re doing.  (Hint: they’re not.)  Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” stepped up Tuesday night to make the point, again, about as clear as it can be made.  Take a look (click the pics to see the clips):

Stewart starts out using their own work to show that the cable networks believe their job is to put people on the air to talk and talk and talk about an event, even when they don’t know what’s going on:

Then he singles out CNN for special recognition as a paradigm…of regurgitation of contentlessness.  The funny part—and there is a funny part—is that the same people who are on the air, making wise pronouncements that much of the information learned early in a dynamic event like a mass shooting turns out to be flat wrong, keep repeating what they’ve heard without bothering to confirm the information.  (Confirming the information is a practice known as “reporting.”)  As Stewart points out, labeling the speculation as “speculation” doesn’t mean it’s OK to keep speculating…but they can’t help themselves:

So, of course, “The Daily Show” news team springs into action to report on the CNN angle of the story…and knocks it out of the park:

Cue Mr. Henley, please:

We can do “The Innuendo,” we can dance and sing

When it’s said and done we haven’t told you a thing

We all know that crap is King, give us dirty laundry