Current Satirical News Research
Michael Foucault
Professor Matthew Jordan compared Jon Stewart to French sociologist Michel Foucault in that both focused their work on “critical irony aim[ed] at truth, a practice of both ironist [that] is more helpful than hurtful in today’s mass media democracy.”[1] This mediaocracy unleashes a wave of sensational stories, leaving important political and controversial topics marginalized in its wake. Jon Stewart uses The Daily Show to call “attention to the artificial discourse that offended their sense of truth.” [2] Still, just as Neil Postman argued that entertainment media was causing voter disengagement, other critics claimed that pervasive irony gives rise to cynical views of culture and distaste for democracy. Satire only reveals constraints to truthful debate in the media or political sphere, they argued, thereby offering no solutions to the appropriate form of political discourse.[3] Jordan pointed out that such claims ignored the fact that the satirical shows are actually a model of communicative action for the public interested in examining the truth so often left behind by the mass media.
Geoffrey Baym also invoked Foucault when discussing political satire, claiming that the “spontaneous philosophy” of post-modern media is that all public speech is inherently propaganda, and thus journalists should go after motives rather than truth.[4] In From Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News, Baym traces the evolving face of journalism, of which The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are emergent. Unlike traditional news of the mid-nineteenth century, in which the press was the Fourth Estate, “the public searchlight of truth and accountability”—today’s mediaocracy “that [Bill] Moyers[5] and Stewart criticize are largely engaged in the postmodern approach to news, the for-profit corporate product that is all too often complicit in the selling of political ideologies and agendas.”[6] Colbert and Stewart’s shows offer a new type of “democratic activism,” that encourages truth-telling and public dialogue that is not restrained by corporate-controlled talking points. [7]
Noting that the mid-nineteenth century era produced a sharp division between the political-normative realms and aesthetic-expressive, Baym wrote, “the discourse of high-modern news paradoxically closed off all potential avenues for political engagement,” including comedy.[8] The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are “the flip-side of infotainment,” in that they engage the public in politics where previously the space was bereft of meaningful debate.[9]
Geoffrey Baym also invoked Foucault when discussing political satire, claiming that the “spontaneous philosophy” of post-modern media is that all public speech is inherently propaganda, and thus journalists should go after motives rather than truth.[4] In From Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News, Baym traces the evolving face of journalism, of which The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are emergent. Unlike traditional news of the mid-nineteenth century, in which the press was the Fourth Estate, “the public searchlight of truth and accountability”—today’s mediaocracy “that [Bill] Moyers[5] and Stewart criticize are largely engaged in the postmodern approach to news, the for-profit corporate product that is all too often complicit in the selling of political ideologies and agendas.”[6] Colbert and Stewart’s shows offer a new type of “democratic activism,” that encourages truth-telling and public dialogue that is not restrained by corporate-controlled talking points. [7]
Noting that the mid-nineteenth century era produced a sharp division between the political-normative realms and aesthetic-expressive, Baym wrote, “the discourse of high-modern news paradoxically closed off all potential avenues for political engagement,” including comedy.[8] The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are “the flip-side of infotainment,” in that they engage the public in politics where previously the space was bereft of meaningful debate.[9]
Laura Feldman is a leading scholar of the nature of political entertainment and satire. In an September 2010 interview, Feldman pointed out that in the current fragmented media environment, politicians have accepted that appearing on late night comedy shows must be a part of the campaign strategy. [10] Feldman said that candidates and officials appearing on shows like The Daily Show are engaging in interviews that are politically substantive: “Ultimately, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, [and] SNL … have become part of mainstream political discourse.” Feldman’s research has shown that The Daily Show influences mainstream press by “exposing its limitations and encouraging journalists to break from conventional norms.”[11]
In Entertaining Politics (2005), Jeffrey P. Jones emphasized that political news shows, like The Daily Show, help identify audiences as citizens by encouraging the process of public thinking. These programs take “pluralism one step further by integrating culture and politics in ways that can enrich and enliven the processes of a discursively active citizenship.”[12]
In addition to qualitative research, there has been a limited number on quantitative research studies performed on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. Several studies have found that entertainment media in the form of political talk shows increased or contributed to increases in knowledge about politics.[13] A few researchers have argued that entertainment media do not promote accurate information holding, resulting in little actual impact of political knowledge.[14] It must be noted, however, that such studies finding little impact did not distinguish between political punditry, talk radio shows, and satirical news shows. In 2008, a study by Young Mie Kim and John Vishak concluded that compared to the news media, The Daily Show and entertainment media are slightly less effective in acquiring factual information, specifically related to retaining issue and procedural knowledge. Their research implied that study participants formed different information processing goals depending on the type of media being viewed: for news, participants’ processing was based on surveillance, whereas for The Daily Show, processing was based on relaxation, implying catharsis.[15] The main problem with this study is that it leaves out deliberation from the equation, an important resulting process from satire that leads to the “correct” information and decision within democracy. Overall, qualitative research on satirical news suffers from an inability to define the roles of the medium. Research does little to distinguish different types of entertainment media and infotainment or consider the specific influences of satire on gaining knowledge.
[1] Matthew Jordan, “Thinking with Foucault about Truth-Telling and The Daily Show,” The Electronic Journal of Communication 18 (2, 3, &4): 2008.
[2] Jordan, “Thinking with Foucault.”
[3] Ibid.
[4] Geoffrey Baym, From Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News, (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2010), 172.
[5] Bill Moyers is a PBS political correspondent, brought to prominence during the Walter Cronkite era of trusted and respectable journalism, is critical of the present media’s corporate interests.
[6] Baym, From Cronkite to Colbert, 167.
[7] Geoffrey Baym, From Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News, (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2010), 167.
[8] Ibid., 170.
[9] Ibid., 173.
[10] Matthew Nisbet, "Distraction or Engagement? Researcher On What Viewers Learn from The Daily Show,” Big Think, accessed October 16, 2010, http://bigthink.com/ideas/24063.
[11] Ibid.
[12]Jeffrey P. Jones, Entertaining Politics, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005),196.
[13] See Jack M. McLeod, Zhongshi Guo, Katie Daily, C. A. Steel, H. Huang, E. Horowitz, et al, “The Impact of Tradition and Nontraditional Meda Forms in the 1992 Election,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (1996): 401-416; Richard Davis and Diana Owen, New Media and American Politics, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Barry Hollander, “Late-night Learning: Do Entertainment Program Increase Political Campaign Knowledge for Young Viewers?” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 49 (2005): 402-415.
[14] See Stephen E. Bennett, “American’s Exposure to Political Talk Radio and their Knowledge of Public Affairs,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 45, no. 4 (2001): 72-86; Markus Prior, “Any Good News in Soft News? The Impact of Soft News Preference on Political Knowledge,” Political Communication 20 (2003): 149-171.
[15] Young Mie Kim and John Vishak, “Just Laugh! You Don’t Need to Remember: The Effects of Entertainment Media on Political Information Processing in Political Judgment,” Journal of Communication 58, no. 2 (June 2008): 338-360.