an international
and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 2, April 2005, ISSN 1552-5112
The
Daily Show:
The Face of American News in 2005
It was a typical Saturday evening broadcast from the
NBC television studios in New York City.
The year was 1975, and unbeknownst to the television viewer, a news
anchor had just uttered the words that would change American news forever, “I’m
Chevy Chase and you’re not.” What began
as a three minute segment on Saturday Night Live, the “Weekend Update”
skit quickly became Saturday Night Live’s most popular skit and occupied
nine minutes of airtime before the first season was over. Chevy Chase “took the stage when the press
and public alike were anxious for a new diversion, not unlike the Beatles when
they landed in New York soon after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. America after Watergate was ready to proclaim
a new clown prince, someone whose very freshness and confidence was a relief
and renewal. In 1975, Chevy Chase was
it. ”[1]
America had fallen in love with comedy-news.
The Daily Show debuted on the American cable channel Comedy Central in July of
1996. Originally, Craig Kilborn was the
show’s host, but he was replaced by current host Jon Stewart on January 11,
1999. Since Stewart took over as the
host, the viewing audience of the show has more than tripled to a peak of over
a million viewers a night in 2004.[2] The
Daily Show has become the most trusted source for political news on
television. Since the beginning of 2004,
Jon Stewart and his cast of reporters have taken hold of the mainstream
media. In the lead up to the 2004
Presidential election Jon Stewart’s face could be seen everywhere. He was a guest on every imaginable news
program from The O’Reilly Report to Crossfire as every newsroom asked for
his opinion on the upcoming election.
Jon Stewart’s book, America
(The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy in Action, has spent months atop
the New York Times
Best Sellers List. In 2004, America
loves comedy-news more than ever.
***
This paper examines the rise
of The Daily Show’s audience over the
last five years. Television critics
argue that it is Stewart’s easy going personality that has endeared him to comedy-news
viewers, however, it would be imprudent to ignore the changes in The Daily
Show’s program content (that is the shift from comedy-news to news) and the
changes in the surrounding society (most notably America’s involvement in Iraq)
that have played a part in the rise of The
Daily Show audience. Just like with
Chevy Chase’s rise to stardom in 1975, Jon Stewart’s rise to prominence and
with him the success of The Daily Show
has largely been in response to America’s need for a new clown prince who can
provide relief and renewal to its involvement in Iraq.
Furthermore, examining the
growth of The Daily Show audience
also involves examining the shift in program content on The Daily Show as witnessed through its transition from comedy-news
to real-news. This transition works much like a two way street; The Daily Show, traditionally only of
comedic value, is used as a source of news, while traditional hard news is
becoming entertainment. In one direction, we see an increase of the political
prestige of the guests on The Daily Show
over the last two years, thus making The
Daily Show more authentic in its news-character. In the other direction we see the transition
in news as a television genre to what James Compton would call a “Debordian
spectacle,” or what Neil Postman would say is responsible for our “amusing
ourselves to death.” The merger between
entertainment and news on the major news stations further highlights that the
difference between hard news and The
Daily Show is decreasing.
This paper seeks to
highlight how The Daily Show is
trying to straddle both sides of the fence; it wants to be fake news so that it
can openly criticize the American political infrastructure, and yet it wants to
be real news so that it’s critiques have credibility. The paper will be divided into two
sections. The first half of the paper
will examine comedy, news, and their interconnectedness. The point is that the situation in Iraq has
left the American audience searching for a different way to interact with news media. Being that humour, namely satire and irony,
have always been ways in which the American people have made sense of their
government’s politics, comedy-news and thus, The Daily Show are the logical
outlet for current American anxieties.
The second half of the paper will examine how news as a genre continues
to shift away from journalism towards entertainment and spectacle. As Americans tune in more and more to
comedy-news, and news as a whole moves towards a form of entertainment, perhaps
The Daily Show and its split
personality (of being both real and fake news) will be the face of news as a
whole in 2005.
***
Comedy has always played an
important role in the ways that a community identifies itself and the types of
stories that it tells. “Tragedy, at
least since the classical times has dealt with our highest desires, but comedy
has been our way of dealing with life as it happens. The kind of comedy that we choose and enjoy
tells us a great deal about the kinds of people we are.”[3] For the United States over the course of the
twentieth century, political humour in particular has been instrumental in
defining the public’s attitude towards the President. For example, the first
half of the twentieth century, or the pre-television era, was marked by a political
humour where the comedian acted as a mediator between the public and the
President. The comedian would speak
about the President by highlighting his humane qualities and making the
President accessible to the common person.
However, the comedian, while speaking of the non political aspects of
the president’s life would comment on anything but the political. A great example of this type of comedian is
Bob Hope, always in the spotlight with regard to political events, but never
speaking about politics.
In contrast, the last half
of the twentieth century saw the attitude of comedians (and thus humour)
towards the President change, where humour became an avenue through which to
openly question or attack the policies of the President in power. A politically charged attitude questioned the
policies on key issues such as race, gender, and war. Comedians such as Lenny Bruce or Richard
Prior used this type of political satire for social commentary. Giving further credence to the changes taking
place were the technological changes; there was a drastic increase in the
amount of televisions in American society. In 1950, only 9 percent of all homes
in America contained at least one television and by 1966 that number had risen
to 92.8 percent. In comparison, in 1966
only 80 percent of all American households had at least one telephone.[4] “The
tissue between politics and popular culture had evaporated…Television has
enforced this connection, making all politicians media-conscious. That is both good and bad. It is good in that the governor or president
must never forget that they serve a democracy.”[5]
This shift in the uses of
political humour throughout the twentieth century has laid the groundwork for
what is the current environment, where the lines between humour and news have
become blurred. “An important paradox to
emerge from this is that, in a political environment frequently styled as
‘postmodern’, the comedian, now widely acknowledged, in the age of impression
management, as truth-teller and iconoclast, may carry more public credibility
than the politician.”[6] This is perhaps the case with George W. Bush,
Jon Stewart, and the American public.
***
In examining humour in
politics, “the most common weapon, however, is ridicule. The authority figure is exposed for what he
really is behind his public mask, and his hypocrisy or social inadequacy is
held up for all to see and to laugh at.
Here is where humor normally plays it’s most important role in the
comedy, as a social corrective.”[7] The Daily Show asks audiences not only
to consume the news, but to critically think about it. Not only to hear the report on troops in
Fallujah, but to think about whether these actions are justified. Humour does not allow us just to ingest the
messages; it forces us to digest them as well.
Humour invites the viewer to react, by laughing. The decision to laugh, although in many ways
a spontaneous physical reaction, first and foremost requires the viewer to
process the comment made by the actor, comedian, news anchor, and either agree
or disagree. Without this “critical”
moment of reflection, a persons’ reaction to humour would not be laughter, but
instead an “I don’t get it” response.
The use of humour and
political satire has been effective in The
Daily Show’s ability to attract an audience interested in political
issues. The level of engagement of The Daily Show audience is
staggering. A recent poll by the
Annenberg Public Policy Centre at the University of Pennsylvania highlighted
that viewers of The Daily Show were
better informed than conventional news viewers on the key political issues
leading up to the 2004 American federal election. While the survey highlighted that the viewers
of all late-night television talk shows were better informed on the 2004 Presidential
candidates and their platforms than those who relied solely on conventional
forms of televised news, viewers of The
Daily Show scored best; outperforming viewers of late night greats David
Letterman and Jay Leno.[8] The Daily Show audience also scored
greater than those who regularly read newspapers or watched television news,
leading Rolling Stone Magazine in October 2004 to conclude that “Stewart
can now cite objective data to prove that he, like Walter Cronkite before him,
deserves to be known as the most trusted name in TV news.[9]
The Daily Show is becoming more credible than traditional news sources as evidenced by
the decision of political candidates to use The
Daily Show as a forum to gain access to voters instead of traditional news sources.
The Democratic Party invited The Daily
Show to cover its 2004 National Convention, which sparked MSNBC to comment
that Stewart’s “starting to be taken seriously as a political force. The
Democratic National Committee announced this month that it plans to invite
Stewart & Co. to cover its convention, amazing since "The Daily Show" is actually a fake
news program.”[10]
Ten months later, Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kerry chose to grant
an interview to Jon Stewart and appeared on The
Daily Show. An ensuing article on Reuters.com stated:
It's ironic
that a comedian whose livelihood comes from what he calls his "fake
news" forum on Comedy Central is staking his ground on serious journalism.
On Stewart's watch, "The Daily Show"
has taken political satire to a new level, so much so that the satirical
descendant of David Frost's "That Was the Week That Was" has the
power to make news, as it did when presidential candidate John Kerry agreed to
be interviewed by an anchor who undoubtedly has more sway with the average 18-
to 34-year-old than Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather combined.[11]
According to The Pew Research Center for the People
and Press, 21 percent of viewers aged 18-29 learnt most of their 2004 presidential
campaign news primarily from The Daily
Show and Saturday Night Live. The
Daily Show was the top rated news show for 18-34 year olds and only Fox
News Channel had more viewers aged 18-49.[12]
The increase in The Daily Show credibility is in large
part due to the increase to its audience size and demographic. Although Bill O'Reilly of Fox’s highly rated
talk show The O'Reilly Factor accused The Daily Show’s audience of being a bunch of "stoned
slackers" the statistics do not support this perspective. Viewers of The Daily Show are 78 percent more likely than the average adult to
have four or more years of college education and 26 percent more likely to have
a household income over $100,000. The
viewers of The O’Reilly Factor did
not rate so well. In contrast to The Daily Show, viewers of The O’Reilly Factor were only 24 percent
more likely than the average adult to have four or more years of college
education and only 11 percent more likely to have a household income over
$100,000. According to CNN, “the guy
watching Stewart may not only be smart, but may also be rich.”[13] The
median age of "The Daily Show"
audience is 33 years old. The audience
of The Daily Show is educated,
interested, and continually growing in market share as people become more and
more disenchanted with traditional forms of news.
It is no coincidence that
the most recent jump in ratings of The
Daily Show parallels America’s involvement in Iraq. This suggests that Americans are looking for
an alternate source of news when it comes to dealing with difficult subjects as
opposed to being exposed to only the CNN or Fox news perspective that seems to
suspiciously support the political agendas of those in power. Stewart himself says, “I enjoy watching Fox
News and I think every country should have their own Al-Jazeera.”[14] Perhaps the popularity of humour in news is
partly due to the ways in which the messages of news are conveyed through the
medium of television. For example,
“television has revolutionized politics not because of the quantity and speed
of its information, not because of its practitioners’ technological savvy, and
not even because of its legion of superficialities…television makes us feel
good about feeling bad about politics.”[15] The Daily Show’s critique of the Bush
Administration allows Americans to feel good about a bad situation in Iraq.
“His cut-the-crap humor hits the target so consistently—you've gotta love a
show that calls its segments on Iraq “Mess O'Potamia.”[16]
The idea of “comedy-news” is
itself a misnomer in that all forms of television content, whether news,
comedy, or sports, are focused on entertainment value. Therefore, differentiating between real and
fake, comedy and broadcast, or hard and soft types of news only creates false
dichotomies. All television news has
moved away from reporting journalism to entertainment, spectacle, and selling.
Neil Postman discussed this movement towards entertainment, not exclusive to
news, twenty years ago when he stated,
“[o]ur politics, religion, news, athletics, education, and commerce have been
transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest
or even much popular notice, the result is that we are a people on the verge of
amusing ourselves to death.”[17]
A large part of this
movement from news to entertainment is due to the phenomenon of
convergence. The
term convergence refers to a remediation of technologies and also to, “the
merging of corporations into ever larger entities and alliances, and the
convergence of messages and cultures.”[18] Elvis Presley is a great example of early
forms media convergence, in that Elvis used his television appearances to sell
his music, and his music to sell his movies, and his movies to sell his brand
name products. The new media
conglomerates of the second half of the twentieth century work in a similar
fashion, so that, when a person watches a television show on one particular
cable channel, they are at the same time being sold products owned by other
companies within that cable channels “im-media-te” family. For
example:
AOL-Time Warner, for instance, owns a
whole stable of valuable magazine properties-Time, People, Sports Illustrates, fortune, Life, entertainment Weekly,
In Style and many more. While these magazines
are each expected to turn a profit, they are also promotional vehicles used to
pump and spin other AOL-Time Warner media products…Warner Brothers Studios
which produces blockbuster films…cable holdings such as CNN, Cinemax, HBO…music
labels such as Atlantic and Elecktra…Warner Books…America On-line…sport
franchises that include the Atlanta Braves in baseball, the NHL’s Atlanta
thrashers and the Atlanta Hawks in basketball…not to mention stadiums and theme
parks…in these circumstances, it’s often difficult to know where journalism
leaves off and self-promotion begins.[19]
At the turn of the millennium, the power of the
culture industries lay in the hands of five multi-national media companies:
Disney, News Corp, Viacom, Vivendi Universal, and AOL Time Warner.
More recently than Postmans’
discussion on “amusing ourselves to death”, James Compton in 2004 examined the
effects of the phenomenon of convergence on the news room “The question “Will
it entertain?’ has replaced ‘Will it inform?’ and journalism’s high calling of
public service has been eroded, leaving the media to settle in to the muck of
low-brow popular culture, the narcissism of celebrity profiles, and the
pornography of violence. What happened?”[20] Compton answers his own question; media
convergence and integrated newsrooms happened.
What is significant about integrated newsrooms is
that the dividing line between editorial and promotional interests has been
blurred irrevocably. In the past, news
media sold mass audiences to advertisers who were given the opportunity to
place their advertisements in front of the delivered eyeballs…[i]n integrated
news rooms, however, the goal is to use editorial content to steer audiences
toward preferred nodes on a company’s or group of companies proprietary network
of multi media outlets.[21]
In much the same way that Fox News gives the viewer
“the soft sell” on other Fox products, The
Daily Show also participates in the media spin of selling its own. For example, when returning from each and
every commercial break an announcer reminds viewers to buy the new book by Jon
Stewart and The Daily Show titled America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to
Democracy in Action. Also,
it is not a coincidence that The Daily
Show hit its media peak, with Jon Stewart’s face on each and every
magazine, newspaper, and television station, at the exact same time that the
new book was released. The integrated news spectacle is just one way in which The Daily Show has crept towards the
world of real news.
The argument could also be
made that The Daily Show has
continually worked to increase its news-like credibility. At the same time as news agencies are moving
more towards entertainment than journalism, The
Daily Show appears to be moving in the other direction: from entertainment
to journalism. The Daily Show has noticeably altered the political status of its
guests. Since Jon Stewart took over as
host, guests have included Vice President Al Gore, former Secretary of State
Henry Kissenger, and notable Senators such John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, John
McCain, Joseph Lieberman, John Kerry, and Bob Dole to mention a few. The
Daily Show has also gained public prestige by winning five Emmys over the
last two years. In 2004, The Daily Show was awarded the Television
Critics Association award for best news
and information program. The Daily Show has become the trusted
source of news for young people when it comes to political issues. According to the Nielsen ratings, during the
2004 party convention, The Daily Show
drew higher ratings in the 11:00 pm to 11:30 pm time slot with the 18-34
demographic than any of the cable news channels, including CNN and Fox.[22]
The Daily Show occupies a privileged position in the news world. At the same time as The Daily Show sells itself as news, it is quick to state its lack
of connection to professional news.
During his appearance on CNN’s Crossfire,
Jon Stewart told co-host Tucker Carlson “You're on CNN. The show that leads
into me is puppets making crank phone calls.”[23] In the media Jon Stewart continually aims to
down play his shows significance by noting that the shows, which precede his
timeslot on the Comedy channel are shows such as Puppets That Kill, or Southpark
and therefore his show should not be taken seriously. However, even as he discredits his shows
legitimacy as news, he cries out for journalistic credibility. Take for example The Daily Show’s coverage of
“Mess O’Potamia”:
But we are at war, and we here at The Daily Show will do our best to keep
you informed of any late-breaking...humor we can find. Of course, our show is
obviously at a disadvantage compared to the many news sources that we're
competing with… at a disadvantage in several respects. For one thing, we are
fake. They are not. So in terms of credibility we are, well, oddly enough,
actually about even. We're about even.
Stewart’s reasoning for denial of the newsworthiness
of his show is an attempt to deflect responsibility away from his program to
allow the show to maintain its persona as comedy-news and talk show, which in
the past has left its writers empowered to say what other network news
broadcasts don’t, or cant, and which has been its raison d’etre and source of popularity. And yet, like real news, Stewart begs his
viewers to “stay tuned for the latest updates” and even tries to validate his
own credibility as a news service by discrediting the other news agencies. The fact that The Daily Show calls itself fake news but is perceived by the
audience as being real, allows it to say things that other news programs could
not get away with under the guise of humour and still have real impact.
Not everyone is happy about The Daily Show’s change in program
content. Many fans feel that the
program, which began as a harsh critique of the media and its coverage of
American politics, has itself, by aiming to affect the voter turnout and
impression in the 2004 Presidential election, altered its own political humour
and coverage. When asked if his show was
equally as critical of the Democrats as the Republicans during the lead up to
the election, Jon Stewart told an interviewer at CBS, "We don't consider
ourselves equal opportunity anythings, because that's not - you know, that's
the beauty of fake journalism. We don't have to - we travel in fake
ethics." [24]
However, the defense of being fake journalists has left many fans unhappy and
unimpressed. A posting on a fan site
perhaps best illustrates this: “somehow, over the years, The Daily Show slowly transformed into an actual news show,
gradually transforming itself bit-by-bit into the very thing it reviled.”[25] Much as the audience is sometimes confused as
Stewart straddles the barrier between real and fake news, so too is Stewart
sometimes confused. While a guest on
CNN’s Crossfire, co-host Tucker
Carlson accused Stewart of being more fun on The Daily Show than during his appearance on Crossfire, suggesting that Stewart was taking himself (and his
opinions) too seriously. Stewart took
offence to the idea that his own comments about journalism were not appreciated
and told Carlson “You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a dick on
your show as you are on any show. [26] At the same time as he uses fake news as his
defence, Jon Stewart still wants to have the credibility of a real news
anchor.
Another way that The Daily Show looks to associate itself
with the credibility of mainstream news is through the actors it uses to play
the roles of its reporters, correspondents and analysts: Stephen Colbert,
Samantha Bee, Ed Helms and Rob Corddry.
If, as Graeme Burton tells us, “news as genre becomes the same stories
told in the same ways to reinforce the same meanings about social power and
social relations,” then The Daily Show
as a news program is not excluded from this group.[27] Even though its correspondents may ask the
most ludicrous questions, the discourse on the show is still telling the same
stories, which reinforce the same social meanings. The shows humour comes from its play on
existing relationships of power in society.
Take as an example an interview conducted by Samantha Bee with a
delegate from Montana at the 2004 Republican Convention in New York:
Samantha Bee: Have you had your picture take with a black person yet?
Delegate: I haven't, but I wouldn't mind doing that.
Bee: That's something you'd be willing to try?
Delegate: Why, certainly.
Bee: There's plenty of them [in New York]. Do you have any in Montana?
Delegate: We don't. In fact, I guess our kids were pretty old before
they saw one.
The humour in this skit comes from the preconceived
ideas that the viewer has about: the Republican Party’s ideas on black people,
the images of country red-necks associated with states like Montana, and the
ridiculous attempt of people to appear politically correct during election
campaigns. At the same time as the
humour attacks the hegemony of American society that it mimics, it also
reinforces it, by acknowledging its existence and using it to garner a laugh. On one level, by performing political satire,
The Daily Show reinforces the
political structure that it criticizes.
For example, when The Daily Show
represents George W. Buish as an idiot for one reason or another, it reinforces
that he is in fact the chosen leader of the free world and thus gives him power
at the same time that it seeks to discredit him. On a semiotic level, by taking a political
event out of its original context and using it as a sound bite to elicit
laughter The Daily Show is in fact
participating in the same practices of media manipulation the show pretends to
be criticizing.
***
In his interview on PBS’s Now with Bill Moyers, Moyers questioned
the journalistic practices of The Daily
Show by stating: “I do not know whether you are practicing an old form of parody
and satire…or a new form of journalism.”[28] Stewart’s response said it all. “Well then,
that either speaks to the sad state of comedy or the sad state of news. I can't
figure out which one. I think, honestly, we're practicing a new form of
desperation.” [29] This new form of desperation is the new face
of news in 2005, so that whether it is Fox News or CNN, the focus of television
news is what is entertaining and not what is news. At the same time, this new desperation is all
about the spectacle, and even more so an integrated news spectacle, so that
selling is also a driving force. Whether
your view of Jon Stewart’s program sees his show as critical of the current
state or as the leader of it, either way, The
Daily Show is the face of news in 2005, or as Moyers said in the prelude to
his interview with Jon Stewart “when future historians come to write the
political story of our times, they will first have to review hundreds of hours
of a cable television program called The
Daily Show. You simply can't understand American politics in the new
millennium without The Daily Show.”[30]
an international
and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 2, April 2005, ISSN 1552-5112