Comedy As News
Monday, April 14, 2008 Filed in: Media
What's funny? The news? Hardly. Yet, The Daily Show
with John Stewart manages to find funny and the truth
in news.
It doesn't take much to make news these days. With a dozen or so 24-hour cable television news outlets that need material, and an insatiable desire to view what's bad, news has gone commodity. Anyone can do it.
At an extreme, anyone can grab a gun and get some headlines. Somewhere in the middle is the political paradox. Politicians want and need to be in the spotlight as news makers, except for those frequent times when the light shines on their wrongdoings.
With few exceptions, getting news has become predictable but not boring. Whether television, radio, newspaper, magazine or internet, the world has an abundance of what is classified as news, but is not newsworthy.
Where is the truth in news. When a bridge collapses, that's news. The truth as to why the bridge collapsed may or may not be uncovered, but that does not discount the newsworthiness of the event.
Is it news when Britney Spears parties without pantys? Unfortunately, yes. Is it news when a US Senator is accused and admits to scandalous sexual wrongdoing? Maybe. Is it news when a sitting president orders illegal wiretapping? Yes. Which one got the most attention among the nation's news media?
Finding truth and honesty and reality in the news is one thing, and sufficiently difficult that it becomes unusual. Finding truth and honesty and reality and comedy in the news is best left The Daily Show, because no one else in media does it, does it better, YouTube notwithstanding.
The classy internet news and thought magazine, Slate, has a news contest. Rather, it's a comedy news contest, which solicits news from readers in the form of an uploaded video. Examples? A video of a spray-on condom which is touted as better than last year's version, the iron-on condom.
Funny? Yes. Newsworthy? No. The Daily Show seeks to reveal the news in the form of comedy and sets something of a raw but deadly accurate standard in the process. A comedy news contest is about comedy, and is not about the truth in news, as a comedy.
It doesn't take much to make news these days. With a dozen or so 24-hour cable television news outlets that need material, and an insatiable desire to view what's bad, news has gone commodity. Anyone can do it.
At an extreme, anyone can grab a gun and get some headlines. Somewhere in the middle is the political paradox. Politicians want and need to be in the spotlight as news makers, except for those frequent times when the light shines on their wrongdoings.
With few exceptions, getting news has become predictable but not boring. Whether television, radio, newspaper, magazine or internet, the world has an abundance of what is classified as news, but is not newsworthy.
Where is the truth in news. When a bridge collapses, that's news. The truth as to why the bridge collapsed may or may not be uncovered, but that does not discount the newsworthiness of the event.
Is it news when Britney Spears parties without pantys? Unfortunately, yes. Is it news when a US Senator is accused and admits to scandalous sexual wrongdoing? Maybe. Is it news when a sitting president orders illegal wiretapping? Yes. Which one got the most attention among the nation's news media?
Finding truth and honesty and reality in the news is one thing, and sufficiently difficult that it becomes unusual. Finding truth and honesty and reality and comedy in the news is best left The Daily Show, because no one else in media does it, does it better, YouTube notwithstanding.
The classy internet news and thought magazine, Slate, has a news contest. Rather, it's a comedy news contest, which solicits news from readers in the form of an uploaded video. Examples? A video of a spray-on condom which is touted as better than last year's version, the iron-on condom.
Funny? Yes. Newsworthy? No. The Daily Show seeks to reveal the news in the form of comedy and sets something of a raw but deadly accurate standard in the process. A comedy news contest is about comedy, and is not about the truth in news, as a comedy.
