Well, this certainly won’t lead to any insufferable late-night smugness: “The results of the new Pew Survey on News Consumption (taken every two years and released this afternoon) suggest that viewers of the ‘fake news’ programs ‘The Daily Show ‘ and ‘The Colbert Report’ are more knowledgeable about current events (as judged by three test questions) than watchers of ‘real’ cable news shows hosted by Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly and Larry King, among others — as well as average consumers of NBC, ABC, Fox News, CNN, C-SPAN and daily newspapers,” reports Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher.

“The national average for answering the three questions was only 18 percent,” Mitchell writes. “But 34 percent of The Colbert Report fans got them right, with 30 percent of The Daily Show viewers doing so — even though the two Comedy Central shows draw younger audiences which generally scored less well on the ‘test’ than older viewers/readers.”

The whole Pew report is pretty fascinating, but one wonders if the 3-question “test” is an accurate barometer of current-event knowledge. Here is an excerpt from the full report:

About half of Americans (53 percent) can correctly identify the Democrats as the party that has a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. In February 2007, shortly after the Democrats gained control of the House after a dozen years of G.O.P. rule, many more people (76 percent) knew the Democrats held the majority. The public is less familiar with the secretary of state (Condoleezza Rice) and the prime minister of Great Britain (Gordon Brown). About four-in-ten (42 percent) can name Rice as the current secretary of state. The public’s ability to identify Rice has not changed much over recent years: In April 2006 and December 2004, shortly before she was sworn in, 43 percent could correctly identify her. The prime minister of Great Britain is not well known among the public. Just more than a quarter (28 percent) can correctly identify Gordon Brown as the leader of Great Britain. Overall, 18 percent of the public is able to correctly answer all three political knowledge questions, while a third (33 percent) do not know the answer to any of the questions.

“I’ll admit, I’m torn about how humiliating this is to the nation overall,” adds Carpetbagger Report’s Steve Benen. “For the typical American not to know Gordon Brown strikes me as only mildly distressing — Brown has only been Prime Minister for about a year, and most of the public was probably more familiar with Tony Blair. But one-in-three Americans got all of the questions wrong. For all the talk about the Democratic Congress, barely half the country knows there’s a Democratic majority.”