After our Monday class discussion covering The Daily Show I thought it would be interesting to see some other stories Jon Stewart covered. A story that has been a big topic locally and nationally is the Trayvon Martin story. As Stewart began to discuss the issue he showed multiple clips of MSNBC, CNN, and FOX and how they portrayed the story. The clips that Stewart showed portrayed the Trayvon story very serious. The news anchors were wearing hoodies and they were saying that justice needed to be served. Stewart portrayed this story very different. He used it as a tool for his comedy. He made people laugh about a young man’s death. I laughed throughout the entire show because he made them funny although I do not think that the issue Stewart was talking about was a laughing matter.
We spoke in class about how The Daily Show is a different type of news. It is not soft news and it is not hard news, it is somewhere in between. Geoffrey Baym discusses this in his article The Daily Show: Discursive Integration and the Reinvention of Political Journalism. Baym says that The Daily Show is a hybrid and that is why it is reaching more young people than hard news is.
We have also discussed in our class the concept of professionalism in journalism. Hard news is often very professional, it is very rare when someone says the “F” bomb. Stewart does not conform to this type of professionalism, he makes up his own rules. Within a 30 minute show he cursed more than 3 times including the “F” bomb. We have also discussed in class how the many people in the marketplace/public want something new. Although The Daily Show is not new, there are still not many news outlets that act the way Jon Stewart does.
I believe that this type of news broadcasting will grow in the future because the amount of people who are being depoliticized from hard news. The Daily Show is a type of infotainment that many people are attracted to. This could be for many reasons but one of them that we have pointed out is that when people get home from work they don’t want to watch a content rich show that involves more critical thinking. Many people want to relax, and The Daily Show is a way they can get information without being bombarded with hard news.
The Daily Show- Jon Stewart
March 26, 2012 rerun.
It's hard to tell from your post whether you think Jon Stewart's bit on Trayvon Martin was a good one or not. Can you explain whether you found it offensive or fair or what your take-away was from it?
ReplyDeleteI think I've seen the bit that you were referring to and I think that Stewart was making the audience laugh by poking fun at the way Broadcast media outlets handled the story -- the prevalence of hoodies and the ridiculousness of Geraldo Rivera's comments, etc. This is his thing, you know? I don't think there is any reason to feel guilty here, nor do I think it speaks to Stewart's professionalism.
I think you are making an interesting case for the Daily Show to be classified under soft news because of the waning "professionalism". It's an interesting connection.
However, despite the sometimes tawdry humor and occasional "f" bomb, the Daily Show strikes me as more professional in a lot of ways than many main stream broad cast news programs. Here, I'm mainly talking about the depth of their research, the range of stories they cover, and the incredibly high-quality interviews Stewart conducts with politicians and scholars. I think his interviews (save for the ones with celebrities) are often on par with those of Meet the Press (the only other new program on television that I respect besides the Daily Show).