Satiric news decreases bias against Arab-Americans and Al Jazeera

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-Satiric news coverage-a format seen on programs such as "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"-decreases Arab American prejudice and bias against Al Jazeera English. A new University of Michigan study finds that Americans can change their views about Al Jazeera English, a global news network, depending on how it is covered by other media. AJE has not been welcomed in the United States, in part, because many people associate it with Al Qaeda and other American adversaries. Many Americans presume the network is biased and driven by an anti-American agenda. Katie Brown and William Youmans, the study's authors and doctoral candidates in the U-M Department of Communication Studies, said their research shows that the bias against AJE correlates with prejudice against Arab Americans. In an online experiment, both bias and prejudice decrease among viewers of lighter, comedic news programming. Nearly 250 adult Americans completed an online survey about their news viewing habits and were placed in three clip-viewing conditions: some watched an "NBC Nightly News" report, others a "Daily Show" segment, and the rest watched no clip.