How do you all feel about shows like the daily show and the colbert report using a comedic approach to politics. Not being a huge fan of watching the news, I can admit that like most young people, I get the most political knowledge from The daily show. Do you think that shows like this are making people think politics and matters which shape are world are not as important because we can laugh at them, or does it help to reach out to an audience that which otherwise might ignore political matters. After watching even a small dose of news its always clear to me that I need to start being more focused on politics but do news shows who poke fun at politics take away from the importance of politics?
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/index.jhtml
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_colbert_report/index.jhtml
Not real news, fake news stories but very a very funny take on politics http://www.theonion.com/content/politics
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8 comments:
I personally don't think that these type of news shows take away from the seriousness of politics. Granted they incorporate comedy into the issues unlike regular news programs, I think it's a really good way to get people to watch the news and stay updated on current events. Because a lot of people aren't interested in watching the news everyday,I think this is a good way to entertain the public while educating them as well in politics.
I agree and think humor is an excellent tactic to making people drop what they are doing and listen. I think that the daily show is generating more awareness of issues in politics this way which is very important for those who would otherwise know very little about our political candidates. I don’t think the show portrays the issues as unimportant. They are bringing different topics to people’s attention because they are important otherwise they wouldn’t be worth mentioning on the show. People have enough sense to know when they watch the show if they want to know the complete story they should read a news article about it or watch the actual news.
During a typical day, I find myself constantly busy and when I do have a chance to sit down and catch up what is going on in the world, I find myself tuning into shows such as The Daily Show, because not only am I getting my news fix, I am also being entertained. Since I don't have time to watch TV for entertainment and also for news, why not combine the two? I don't think these shows take away from the importance of politics. I think they provide a creative and effective way to get the news out to people who may not enjoy typical news shows and also to people like myself who don't have enough free time to watch both the news and entertaining television.
I don't think that the comedy news shows, such as "The Daily Show," take away from the importance of politics. Even though those types of shows are usually poking fun of the candidates,politicans and issues, they are all based off real issues and real people. Therefore I think that people are still getting the jist and basic ideas of the important issues, with comedy mixed in. I also think that by mixing in humor, the audience is more apt to absorb and take in what they are watching as opposed to just watching the dry content on the regular broadcast news.
I found two articles on the internet that dealt with this very issue. One article from CNN.com ( http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/28/comedy.politics/) showed that surveys done found that viewers who watched the Daily Show, knew more about election issues than people who regularly read newspapers or watched the television news.
In the other article I found, http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/4159.html, Indiana University did a study that found that The Daily Show with John Stewart was as substantive as network news.
Both of these articles explain that while these shows are supposed to be funny, the issues they poke fun at, are infact real, and the viewers are really learning from them. I thought both articles were really interesting and really applied to this posting.
I agree with everyone, I think that without these shows a lot of people (myself included) would not know what was going on in the world of politics. I don't think that using comedy as a way to interest viewers lessens the importance of the issues at all. I do however feel that these TV shows can have a major impact on the opinions of their viewers because they are not just giving the news, they are often expressing an opinion.
KRISTIN PERRY
I think that it is important to inform our country on issues any way that we can. A good amount of our country doesn't understand what goes on in government, and therefore is apathetic/lazy to really step back and understand what is happening every day down in capital hill. Having shows like the Daily Show can help reach out to people and get the issues out there. Sure, the issues may be more one-sided, but at least the ideas are out there. Once the ideas are in people's minds, they can be more informed to a certain degree. Hopefully, when one is more informed, they will look more into that issue to understand it to its fullest and gain their own opinion. However, in order to get to that point, I believe that it is important to have news shows who poke fun at politics.
Most people don't feel like they have enough time for the news. In reality, they are busy all day at work, or at school, and don't want to come home to watch the news with world issues to make them more stressed out. They want to sit back, relax, and be entertained. Comedic shows can help one to be entertained, to laugh, and to be informed of what our political leaders have been up to all at the same time. I also think that since these comedic shows use actual news for the basis of laughter, it shows that politics are important-otherwise they would be bringing up something else to poke fun at.
I agree with most here that these comedic shows don't take away from the seriousness of politics. Personally I am not a fan of politics. I find it sometimes to be boring and there is a lot that I don't understand. This is probably a big reason why I don't watch the news as often as one should. I do however enjoy the Daily Show because I can still keep up on politics while being entertained.
Using humor about a situation or an event that happened in politics is a good way to get people interested in it. They will laugh at the jokes and be entertained and if they are interested enough they will go to cnn.com to read the real story. People like Hilary Clinton are in the public's eye and so must expect that everything coming out of their mouths will be examined and probably made fun of if it's something to poke fun at. These shows just try to put a little entertainment into a topic that for the most part is not humorous and there is nothing wrong with that.
This is an interesting topic because in many of my classs, students have admitted to getting most of thier news from the daily show or colbert report. Our younger genertation is more receptive and understands the news better when it is put into a comedic form. I think these shows are a great media outlet and that any way to get the younger generations to know what is going on in the world, is a good thing. Very shortly, Fox News will be trying it's hand at comedy show called the 1/2 Hour News Hour and it will be taking a more conservative standpoint rather than the other news shows. It will be interesting to see how receptive people are to this political comedy versus Colbert and The Daily Show. Also, recently Bill O'Reilly appeared on the Colbert Report and Colbert was a guest on the O'Reilly factor. It was an interesting match up for politics and comedy. A lot of news coverage was put on this because colbert has really based his character on O'Rielly. I think that younger generations tend to watch Colbert because hes funny and relatable. However, O'Rielly still has one of the top rated shows and so people are contuing to watch him. If anyone gets a chance to see these two on each others shows, its worth watching!
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