Carpio 1

Euripide Carpio

November 7, 2016

COM 122

News Run by Clowns

Currently, it is almost a fashion trend to call the media “biased”. Everyone from students to the

potential president of the United States is saying it. So then, how can one reliably get a source of bias-

free news? Many have turned to mock news shows like The Daily Show or The Colbert Report for their

new source of news. Supporters of these shows state that they clearly represent an independent thinking

of the world’s happenings all with a comedic twist. I do not disagree with this. Many mock news

reporters like Jon Stewart do tend to be independent and comedic; however, my concern is that many

viewers see their shows as credible, unbiased, sources of news. Many of these mock news reporters are

not out to report the news but to make a joke. It is like being taught Calculous by a clown: it’s funny and

entertaining, but I won’t learn anything afterwards. Satirical news channels have been on the rise, but

viewers need to understand that they’re entertainment and not a reliable source for news.

The one huge difference between “fake” and “real” news channels is probably the difference in

reporting the news. While CNN has three or more reporters with different views, all giving their own

opinion to the news story they just covered, satirical shows like The Daily Show only have one news

reporter with his opinion the only one being heard. The difference in opinions like ones offered by CNN

is vastly needed, for it allows the audience to see and visualize different views of a subject and even how

to interact with someone with different opinions. The danger behind only having one narrator is that the

story would be prone to either the conscious or unconscious bias of the narrator. For example, Jon

Stewart, host of The Daily Show, is Jewish and therefore would be a strong defender of Israel and its

policies. This causes a problem when reporting because he would then have a bias leaning towards Israel,

the same way a Palestinian reporter would have a bias leaning towards Palestine.
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But how can the narrator be biased if they attack both sides? During Steven Colbert’s last show,

he was discussing the latest Clinton email scandal. He was relatively even with his reporting until the

jokes started. One could easily tell that he was letting Clinton off easy, with nearly every joke having to

do with the emails being curved towards Anthony Weiner and his sex scandal and not directly at Clinton.

Donald Trump suffered the worst: nearly every joke had something to do with racial tensions or his

ongoing sex abuse scandal. In my opinion, that was highly ironic, because if it was CNN or any other

main news network doing that, they would be called biased in a heartbeat. I suppose it provides evidence

that their underlying bias is hidden on top of a rug of comedy.

But what’s wrong with grilling one candidate harder than the other? TV shows made and braked

potential presidents since their creation. Show hosts have the power to make any politician seem likable

or a horrible human being. What’s frightening is that since there is not a global organization with teams

upon teams dedicated to making sure every single candidate is treated fairly, it’s up to them to decide who

they deem likable or not. Especially in the case of show hosts Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert as a

political behavior analysts noted in his article, “More than any other late-night source of political comedy,

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is gaining increased attention from political communication

scholar…..Overall, the consensus of this research is that The Daily Show does have the potential to

influence political discourse as well as overall attitudes.” (Morris 2) This power to make or break people

should be another reason to discredit them, for it makes them more liable to be biased, since they single

handedly have the power to put someone in office or not.

Going back to my example of the clown teaching Calculus, many students would leave the class

not understanding anything because the clown would be trying to make a joke instead of efficiently

teaching the information. This same situation happens with satirical news channels. They try to fill their

reports with jokes till the point where you couldn’t get anything valuable from the reporting except a few

zingers at the Iranian president. Another problem with the comedic approach to reporting is that

eventually the jokes would contain a bias to what the reporter thinks of the story. If the reporter believes
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the Iran nuclear deal was horrible, he would make a joke to show how horrible it is. Jokes are by nature

opinionated and usually directed to put someone down. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to make a funny

joke without belittling the person. What if the joke was simply too convoluted to understand?

Unfortunately, if the viewer does not get the joke, then he also does not get the news story.

One might object here and say that the comedic approach to news reporting makes all the

complicated issues going on in the world into simple one-liners. Admittedly, that is true. I realized this

personally when Steven Colbert was reporting on the most recent Hillary email scandal. He summed up a

story in three minutes that took CNN nearly two hours. This could be because “by using the technique of

deflating rhetoric through humor, Jon Stewart is participating in what Jeffrey Stout calls “conversation.””

(Nilles 2) For some, this would prove that satirical channels are not only a valid source of news, but an

even better one. I disagree, because the reason CNN’s reporting of the situation took 2 hours is that they

were talking to multiple sources and people all with different opinions on the subject to provide viewers

with the most compressed idea of the situation and how exactly this situation is going to be dealt with.

Compare it to someone who reads the material only because they have a test on it: they ace the test, but

when it comes to applying the knowledge, they fail. They know the information, but they don’t have a

deep understanding of it. Same way one of Colbert’s viewers might be, they may know of the email

situation but they don’t have a deep understanding of the internal workings of such a scandal, such as who

reports to who, who needs to be in charge, etc.

It comes as no surprise that a satirical news channel would skim over the news like this: after all,

in his article, Matthew Binford recalled an interview Jon Stewart did with CNN’s show Crossfire “When

Crossfire hosts then attacked Stewart for not asking tough enough questions to then presidential candidate

John Kerry, Stewart responded that his mission was not one of traditional journalism but instead of

comedy” (7) .However what’s disturbing is what author Roland N. Jacobs wrote in his article where he

pointed out “….despite the fact that a 2007 Pew poll found Jon Stewart to be the most trusted news figure

in the United States, Stewart himself is always quick to dismiss his show’s relevance, emphasizing that it
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is about ‘fake news’ and that its only motivation is to be funny” (2) America’s number one trusted news

figure is openly admitting to reporting false news. Even if you don’t care about the biasedness or the half-

baked reporting of these satirical news channels, this is concerning. Those viewers who see Jon Stewart as

or any other satirical news host as a valid source of news will soon go out and vote. There votes would

more than likely be based on whoever the host prefers at the time. This would basically give a popular

candidate an insane number of votes compared to a lesser known one. The American people are being

coerced into voting for a certain candidate because their most trusted news show said that he/she isn’t all

that bad. One can obviously see how much that can affect your vote as an educated voter and potentially

democracy in general

Even with the issues with satirical news channels, majority of people are still drawn to them. This

causes a situation where these shows would start competing to see who can make the most jokes, who can

be the most random, who can be the most entertaining, until the point where they all just become comedy

shows. I personally believe the reason for this switch from real to satirical is mainly because we don’t

want to hear the truth. If the news channel is saying something I don’t like, then it’s bias. If the news

channel is covering one person more than the other, then it’s biased. We as human beings need a

difference of opinion: we need to hear things we don’t want to hear, because without that, we become

nothing more than anti-social freaks who see themselves as the only intelligent people and the rest of

humanity as sheep because they do not agree with you.

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Works Cited

Binford, Matthew. Political Satire: Satirical News Affinity and its Relationship with

Political Knowledge and Traditional News Media Consumption, Middle Tennessee State

University, Ann Arbor,

2015.http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/1718228906?accountid=2

7203.

Jacobs, Ronald N., and Nickie M. Wild. "A Cultural Sociology of the Daily show and the Colbert

Report." American Journal of Cultural Sociology, vol. 1, no. 1, 2013., pp. 69-

95doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/10.1057/ajcs.2012.7.

Morris, Jonathan S. "The Daily show with Jon Stewart and Audience Attitude Change

during the 2004 Party Conventions." Political Behavior, vol. 31, no. 1, 2009., pp. 79-

102doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/10.1007/s11109-008-9064-y.

Nilles, Angela H. Jon Stewart and the Daily show: Humor, Ethics and Conversation in the Public Square,

University of Colorado at Boulder, Ann Arbor,

2011.http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/897135048?accountid=27

203.