The Daily Show also makes its own innovations. While it draws on the format of the late-night talk show, The Daily Show goes a step further and does something unique. It blends the entertainment genre of the late-night talk show with its own appropriations of journalistic forms. I was thinking about how The Daily Show has "news analysts," "investigative reporters," and even "foreign correspondents." I looked back through some Daily Show clips to find some examples, and this one jumped out at me (once again, the financial crisis becomes a theme):
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| The Money Honey Bee | ||||
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Samantha Bee uses a format we recognize. She plays at being a reporter: conducting interviews, reporting back, summarizing the issue at hand. The head shots and the voice over also meant to make us think "news." But the entire story is undercut by ironic twists. Think of the bee costume, and the awkward, blatantly biased questions, the ironic commentary. It's not really news, is it? I mean, Samantha Bee mocks one of her interviewees outright. I wouldn't count on that segment as my sole source of information on short selling. If I already know a little bit about the financial crisis, and a little bit about short selling... well, then it takes on a very different function.
The Daily Show isn't obligated to be fair and balanced, which means that the writers and comedians can highlight things journalists can't. The Daily Show is free to make it's own commentary on current events. A pattern I'm starting to see is that The Daily Show taps into the power relations and the popular neuroses of America. This clip with Larry Wilmore is a good example. As with most good comedy, you sit there and laugh because the joke is uncomfortably true.
Ultimately, I really don't think The Daily Show is some alternative form of journalism. It doesn't pretend to be news, and it doesn't meet the standards the journalism is subject to (e.g. fair, balanced, informative coverage). What I do think is that The Daily Show offers up some pretty significant social and political commentary. Commentary which is informative in its own way.
Do you find instances of social and political commentary in The Daily Show? Do you think that The Daily Show is a kind of journalism in its own right? Or do you think that the show nothing more than just people poking fun at politics because they can?
How The Daily Show relates to the current state of our news media seems to be a big deal. I'm still mulling that one over, but look for another post along those lines sometime soon.
3 comments:
The weird thing is how the Daily how veers back and forth between serious commentary, and outrageous humor, often in the same segment. And, yes, there is long tradition of this; but what I like most is how they have captured and engaged young people in the issues of the day. Now, twenty year olds can name the speaker of the house, the supreme court justices, and even the majority whip, when they paid absolutey no attention in civics class. So while it is NOT journalism, it is, in a way, a "gateway drug".
This leads me back in history to "The Medium Is The Message" ~ Good old Marshall was required reading for us in college days gone by. The question still stands..is this medium the message that Daily wants to send? I see the medium as the comedy, the irony, Money Honey Bee....are we distracted from the content intentionally? Is it the fomative years spent in front of Sesame Street that have made this a viable way of disseminating news and providing a format for discussion to the younger generations? I may have to head to the attic find my book. I wonder how McLuhan (Sp? - my poor brain) stands the test of time.
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Interesting blog, albiet a bit of a narrow topic. I found it humorous that I understood the title to the blog immediately without reading any of it's content.
I can't comment much on the daily show, since I really don't watch it, but I have heard a lot about it. Long ago I gave up on 'programmed' media news, such as print and broadcast media. I learned a long time ago that editors have agendas, no different than Charles Foster Kane in "Citizen Kane".
When I attended college in the leate 70s, I was in the media center one night watching the feeds from CBS, NBC and ABC all at the same time on the monitors (something no-one else got to do back then) and was dumbfounded that each network placed vastly different values on the same stories. Then I went home and tuned in my shortwave radio and listened to the BBC, and NONE of their lead stories were any of the ones covered by the 'Big 3'. That is is when I realized that news was not global, but instead it was tailored to an audience to make them think and believe a certain way.
I believe that the Daily Show represents a shift away from 'hard' news to a newer - hipper version more slated for younger tastes and sensabilities.
However, if anyone really wants to know the truth and the real news, the stories have to be weighed against various sources and and consumed with a bit of skeptisium. If you 'see' it happen it is news, if you tell someone you saw it happen it is editorialized.
We are hopefully on the way toward a more informed populace, but it is going to be a very long and rocky road. Whether the daily show helps or hurts is yet to be seen.
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