'It's Funny How Funny Just the Facts Can Be' By Paul Farhi

I figured that TDS and CR's news clip montages would be from a combo of posts on their message boards and random interns. Turns out, they're mostly found by one guy with a ridiculous memory.

Highlights:

The before-and-after videos didn't air on CNN or MSNBC or ABC. Instead, the revealing sound bites ran back to back on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." The satiric Comedy Central program regularly unearths telling footage ignored or overlooked by the real news guys.

Or, to be specific, Adam Chodikoff does.

While Stewart and the show's deadpan "correspondents" usually get the laughs, Javerbaum says Chodikoff is the program's "unsung hero."

By mid-morning, when Stewart and the program's writers convene, Chodikoff is armed with a sheaf of articles and notes -- raw material for future headlines and segments.

Chodikoff "sees the whole picture," says Rob Kutner, one of the show's writers. He's "in the news matrix. He spots patterns, trends, the forces of history. He remembers a politician saying the opposite thing three years ago and gets us to that video."

Chodikoff insists there's no agenda behind any of it, that he's part of a comedy show, not a crusade. "The show is anti-Establishment," he says. "Bush happens to be the president. He's the one in power."

He adds: "I want to make the smartest, funniest show possible. I don't wake up every morning saying: 'I gotta get him. I gotta get him.' "

Javerbaum, the executive producer, suggests that a key function of "The Daily Show" is to make connections and highlight news that the news media don't. TV news, in particular, he says, "doesn't have an interest in rocking the status quo because it's entrenched with the status quo. We think all of these [networks] are really, really bad at what they do. My opinion is they suck at their jobs."

Which, if true, makes Adam Chodikoff's job a whole lot easier.