The Role of Satire, Parody and Fake News Programs in Political Reporting

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The Role of Satire, Parody and Fake News Programs in Political Reporting
Abstract
The realm of journalism has been changing over the years, and traditional journalism has indeed been re-conceptualized especially regarding reporting political news. Satirical fake news has helped to restructure the reporting of political issues while entertaining the viewers CITATION Jas09 \l 1033 (Holt, 2009). The position held by satirical and fake news hosted by comedians has offered a new avenue of informing the masses on important matters whilst maintaining their primary objective of entertaining. Though the advent of fake news programs hosted by comedians is widely for entertainment, the programs have evolved to incorporate and address pertinent issues affecting the country CITATION ADa12 \l 1033 (Dagnes, 2012). The trend has cemented its presence in media houses and attracted many viewers who have catapulted the shows to rival mainstream media reporting on the key issues affecting the citizens. This paper will examine The Daily Show by Jon Stewart, Last Week Tonight by John Oliver and The Tonight Show by Jay Leno.
One of the main points of discussion is how hosts use parody and satire together to air his opinions to his audience about political correctness. This article would elucidate the efficacy of methods the presenter uses to pass the message to his viewers on politics. Secondly, the article would focus on whether the satirical and fake news programs offer any information not covered by the mainstream media. This is through comparison of the content provided by the satirical and fake news programs and mainstream media content. Thirdly, this paper would also ascertain if the satirical and fake news program have any impact on the political landscape of US.
Introduction
According to ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"246ee6b05k","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Baym, 2005)","plainCitation":"(Baym, 2005)"},"citationItems":[{"id":17,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/SL4LmXvQ/items/CHX25WBM"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/SL4LmXvQ/items/CHX25WBM"],"itemData":{"id":17,"type":"article-journal","title":"The Daily Show: Discursive Integration and the Reinvention of Political Journalism","container-title":"Political Communication","page":"259-276","volume":"22","issue":"3","source":"CrossRef","DOI":"10.1080/10584600591006492","ISSN":"1058-4609, 1091-7675","shortTitle":"The Daily Show","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Baym","given":"Geoffrey"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2005",7]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Baym, 2005), the quality of news has declined in recent years. The news outlets, which were once authoritative sources of news, are now slowly replaced by other programming strategies ranging from “news lite” to local happy talk. The market is very competitive which has forced the real journalism to be sacrificed for the eye-catching content. The basic principles of journalism like independence, inquiry, and independence have been neglected leading to the decline in viewership. Research done by Pew Research Center in 2002 indicated that the audience of television dropped ...