Among Americans under age 30, Jon Stewart is tied with Bill O’Reilly as the nation’s most admired journalist. Overall, he’s No. 4.

In a March 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center, Stewart was tied with Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Anderson Cooper. He was behind No. 1 Katie Couric, O’Reilly and Charles Gibson and ahead of Jim Lehrer, Walter Cronkite, Ted Koppel, Wolf Blitzer and a slew of others.

Of course Stewart is a comedian. His “Daily Show” airs weeknights on Comedy Central.

But in an era when “real” TV newspeople often toss softball questions at political candidates (or in the case of George Stephanopoulos to Hillary Clinton in one of the televised debates, didn’t ask one he said he knew she wouldn’t want to answer!) and press sensational issues rather than policy questions, Stewart gets down to brass tacks, which is not news to anyone who watches him regularly.

On his show last night, he asked John McCain whether he’d rather run against Clinton or Barack Obama. McCain didn’t want to answer, and Stewart pressed him. It was a compelling question. No answer came, but Stewart was more dogged than any “real” anchor of late. He also pressed McCain, quite humorously, on the serious issue of how he can shake the shadow of President Bush and why that’s any different from Obama having to shake Pastor Jeremiah Wright. The point was clear: You politicians all have baggage, but you like to gloss over yours while pointing out the other guy’s. McCain was frank in distancing himself from Bush’s policies. It was a darn good news interview, and yet funny as hell at times.

Stewart also drew out the softer and more jovial side of John McCain that you rarely see on the network or cable news programs. Maybe we got a glimpse of the real John McCain last night, and since he’s running for president, that’s no laughing matter.

Anyway, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism actually studied the content of “The Daily Show” for all of 2007 in an effort to figure out why Stewart is so admired as a journalist, even though Stewart himself says he is not one.

The upshot: Stewart uses a lot of news footage from the day’s events to show contrast and contradiction (just like the other news programs) and he picks selectively among major events (just like the other news programs) and ignores a lot of what happened during the day (just like …).

The Pew analysis, out yesterday, concludes: In its choice of topics, its use of news footage to deconstruct the manipulations by public figures and its tendency toward pointed satire over playing just for laughs, “The Daily Show” performs a function that is close to journalistic in nature — getting people to think critically about the public square.

• See also: Scientist Finds Truthiness in the ‘Colbert Bump’

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