BOB GARFIELD: Reality TV has a corollary in reality-based fake TV news. If you've ever seen The Daily Show on Comedy Central or Da Ali G Show on HBO, you're familiar with the conceit of the pretend journalist asking inane questions of real, if unwitting, public figures. It works, often to hilarious effect, only so long as the interviewee is, to some degree, unwitting, as in this interview between mock hip hip youth reporter Ali G and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft.

ALI G.: Did they ever catch the people that sent Tampax through the post?

BRENT SCOWCROFT: No, they did not. It wasn't Tampax, it was Anthrax.

ALI G.: Oh, I think there's different brand names. Like we save "pavement," you say "sidewalk, whatever.

BOB GARFIELD: Actually, Ali G.'s time in America may be over. His would-be victims know him now. In fact, recently one Republican Capitol Hill press secretary sent an e-mail to all his GOP counterparts warning of Ali G. But what of The Daily Show. You'd think that with multiple Emmy and Peabody Awards and more exposure than at least one Hilton sister, producers would have run out of unsuspecting guests for its famous field reports. But they haven't. Stewart Bailey is co-executive producer of The Daily Show, and has been with the program since its creation in 1996. Stewart, welcome to OTM.

STEWART BAILEY: Thank you very much. And, by the way, we would be thrilled if we ever achieve the notoriety of at least one Hilton sister. That's still a goal for us.

BOB GARFIELD: Well, from your lips to God's ears.

STEWART BAILEY: [LAUGHS]

BOB GARFIELD: Stewart, give me a sense first of how these field reports come about. I mean, you have four or five faux correspondents. You find some story. Then what happens?

STEWART BAILEY: We actually sort operate in a strange way like an actual newsroom. We have researchers and associate producers and field producers who all gather information, pre-interview people. And we are sort of documenting a real story, to some very thin extent. If it were a pure sketch, it doesn't work as well, and our audience--they have a very big fake meter--and if they don't sense that this is actually something in somebody's life or that it means something to somebody, then they'd lose interest very quickly.

BOB GARFIELD: When your field producers fan out to book these interviews, what exactly do they say to the perspective interviewee? I mean, you must employ some sort of bait and switch kind of ruse with perspective guests?

STEWART BAILEY: Not--not really. I mean, you would think so, but they kind of want to participate in this alternative reality, you know. And when you ask somebody a very silly question with a completely straight face, you will by and large get a straight answer, which is what we want. What we're really getting at is the journalist in a story who is so cocky, is so suave, is so smooth. No one's really like that. And so, what if you got somebody that was really not very capable at all of even understanding a basic story, but yet sent them out to report on something, what would happen? And that's a lot of times the game that we're playing in an interview.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay. Here's an example of that. This is Stephen Colbert interviewing Lonnie Randolph, President of the South Carolina NAACP, about its boycott of the Dukes of Hazard movie because of the Confederate flag painted on the roof of the good ole boys 1969 Dodge Charger.

LONNIE RANDOLPH: That flag is the universal symbol of bigotry, racism and white supremacy.

STEVEN COLBERT: Are you sure about that? [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

LONNIE RANDOLPH: I am absolutely sure about that.

STEVEN COLBERT: Even on a kick-ass car? [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] It's a car, it's on top of a car. [CLAPPING, LAUGHTER]

LONNIE RANDOLPH: It was also fun to lynch Black people at one time in this country, a lot of fun.

STEVEN COLBERT: See, that's where you and I differ. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

BOB GARFIELD: Now, I was going to ask you if interviews sometimes fall apart because folks are onto you and refuse to play along. But I'll bet it's much worse when they are onto you and they do try to play along.

STEWART BAILEY: Well, you wouldn't know it 'cause we'll never use that. If somebody is trying to crack jokes, then that's the first thing that's on the edit room floor. So that's an easy problem for us to solve. The thing that we don't do is let people know exactly what our ultimate point of view is. I mean, we did a piece on election night that was our exit polling piece, and we felt that exit polls were not only sort of meaningless but also invasive. So to get at that point, we decided to poll people as they were exiting anything. We found a guy that was coming out of a porn shop and Samantha B. walked up to him and said excuse me, sir can I have your full name and exactly what did you purchase in there?

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHING]

STEWART BAILEY: And he--we had to put a bar over his eyes, but his eyes almost popped out. We want there to be as many natural moments as possible.

BOB GARFIELD: HBO has said there are no plans to bring back the Ali G. Show, partly because the joke has worn too thin and that too many people recognize him now. Do you think The Daily Show has to worry that at some point its profile will be so high that it really can't find any more stooges?

STEWART BAILEY: "Stooges" is an ugly word, Bob. I'd never-- [OVERTALK]

BOB GARFIELD: You're right, I apologize for that. Let's just say "dupes."

STEWART BAILEY: [LAUGHS] If we really thought of it like that, we probably would worry. But almost always the people that are involved in our reports are thrilled with them. They, 99 percent of the time, call us and say that was wonderful, my kids think I'm the coolest dad in the world now. And so, if it weren't for that, I think we would worry.

BOB GARFIELD: Stewart, thank you very much.

STEWART BAILEY: A pleasure, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Stewart Bailey is the co-executive product of The Daily Show on Comedy Central.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: A few months back Daily Show reporter Samantha Bee decided to take on the controversy surrounding Clint Eastwood's movie Million Dollar Baby, which ends shockingly with a mercy killing. She called Newsday film critic Gene Seymour who at first thought they were going to talk about euthanasia, then learned it was going to be how film critics are spoilers who ruin surprise endings, and finally realized it was about something else altogether.

GENE SEYMOUR: I kind of knew what to expect and that I was probably being set up for something. But it was my inclination to kind of play along--

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Right.

GENE SEYMOUR: --because, you know, I know how comedy works. And I knew that whatever they did the important thing was for me to be as deadpan about it as possible. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

SAMANTHA BEE: Who got better enforcement of spoiler alerts?

GENE SEYMOUR: Mmm?

SAMANTHA BEE: Should we adopt a color-coding system similar to Homeland Security?

GENE SEYMOUR: Yes. I think using colors to denote the level of shock, the impact-- [OVERTALK]

SAMANTHA BEE: Don't look at my boobs. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

GENE SEYMOUR: I'm sorry. As you, as you say, it certainly worked well in Homeland Security. It could also work--

SAMANTHA BEE: Don't look at them.

GENE SEYMOUR: --well in defending people [OVERTALK].

SAMANTHA BEE: Don't look at them! [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

GENE SEYMOUR: Your eyes are very nice. [OVERTALK]

SAMANTHA BEE: Thank you. How are my boobs? See? [BUZZING SOUND] You looked at them again.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So--

GENE SEYMOUR: Yeah--

BROOKE GLADSTONE: --your 15-year-old watches the show all the time. Is any of this going through your mind?

GENE SEYMOUR: Yeah. And I guess part of what was going through my mind was that well, because he is a 15-year-old son of mine, my embarrassment [CHUCKLES] is by no means something that is necessarily undesirable to him because [LAUGHTER] we as parents embarrass him all the time. So this is kind of give-back. Also, I know that at the moment, anyway, The Daily Show kind of rules the world in terms of TV comedy right now. And I just wanted to see what it was like to be in that world, even if it is as kind of a comic stumble bum foil. Only one person seemed to be grieving for my self esteem: "My God, didn't you know they were ridiculing you, didn't you know they were setting you up?" And I said well, you're the only one who thinks that. [LAUGHS]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Was that your wife?

GENE SEYMOUR: [LAUGHS] No. No, my wife, she found it bewildering but she knew, more than anyone else, that I was not looking at her boobs.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] But at some point there--

GENE SEYMOUR: Yeah--

BROOKE GLADSTONE: --and it seemed to me this was an effort at comedy at your part--

GENE SEYMOUR: Yeah.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: --you seemed to be making strives to definitely not look at her chest.

GENE SEYMOUR: I guess I did try to consciously shift my eyes. You did notice that then, right?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mmm-hmm. [AFFIRMATIVE].

GENE SEYMOUR: I did. I was sort of thinking okay, this is improvisational theater, and therefore, one needs to kind of live in the moment. Professional funny people don't like it when amateurs are trying to out-funny them.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Right.

GENE SEYMOUR: I knew that going in. And so I decided to be--whatever it is they wanted me to be.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Film critic Gene Seymour writes for Newsday.

BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Tony Field, Jamie York and Mike Vuolo and edited by Brooke. Dylan Keefe is our technical director and Jennifer Munson our engineer. We had engineering help from Rob Christensen and other help from Sarah Dalsimer and Josh Nathan-Kazis. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Katya Rogers is our senior producer and John Keefe our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and find free transcripts, MP3 downloads and our podcasts at onthemedia.org. And e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media, from WNYC. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You lookin' at my boobs? [MUSIC TAG]