Class Reflection

After reading articles of Week two and three, I understand that comedy news is an influential media form and it definitely needs a lot of research and preparation. Politic and social issue are the two major contents involved in comedy news, but it is not an easy work to make jokes about them. This post is going to analyse how John Stewart thinks about his show and how he satires news in a proper way.

According to Geoffrey Baym, comedy news is blurring the boundaries of serious news and entertainment. However, most people would still think of jokes about Donald Trump’s hairstyle when they talk about late night shows. What is the most important point of late night shows? Criticism or jokes? In the conversation with Bill Moyers, Jon Stewart answered, “I think myself as a comedian who has the pleasure to write jokes about things that I actually care about”. It is consistent with Geoffrey’s article that comedy news programs often intend to reduce the attention on political information. First, most of the comedy news is developed from traditional news and this may be a big difference between journalists and comedy news hosts. As Stewart said, “we may not be the first people on the scene”, but hosts consume news and then produce their own comments. Compared to journalists (who are more on the truth and politics side), hosts are freer to express their personal opinions and speak the underlying meaning. In my opinion, satire and parody skill differentiates hosts from the traditional politics and may become their protector. 

Then, Bill Moyers asked, “Why people say you are telling the truth when you make it up?” This question implies that an effective comedy news program requires a lot of researches to make people trust it. For example, in the Occupy Wall Street Movement segment, Stewart dramatically satirised back when a commentator compared this movement with Tea Party behaviour. For every segment, hosts and their teams need to search for various related information so they can be confident to make jokes. Although Stewart refuses to take himself seriously as a social critic, he is always expressing quality political contents into The Daily Show. Because of this, viewers are attracted by Stewart’s personal charm and want to listen to his comments.

Moreover, I really enjoyed the clip that Steve Carell played as a hilarious correspondent in Iraq. The writer, actor and Stewart cooperated so perfectly to create the ironic effect. Late night shows work very hard on the comedic part to change the way people view news and get more attention. In my opinion, comedy news program should firstly be a successful comedy show that makes viewers laugh, and hosts as comedians, are allowed to satire or criticise ‘serious’ politics.